April Fool's Day

I spent a bit of time this morning researching the origins of this day of pranks. It seems that no one knows why or how this particular customary day came into being. There are many theories, the most prominent being that it had something to do with the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian version.

I did come across an interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor. Here's a snippet.

Back in 1983, Boston University Prof. Joseph Boskin got a call from the press relations office asking what he knew about April Fools' Day. "I said [sarcastically] I'd been researching it for years," Dr. Boskin recalled Thursday, in a telephone interview from his home in Cambridge, Mass.

Days later, he was flying to Los Angeles to interview Norman Lear, producer of "All in the Family," to write a history of the television show. When his flight landed, the airport intercom called his name, telling him to go to the nearest white phone. It was BU's press relations office again, saying it had set up an interview between him and the Associated Press to talk about the history of April Fools' Day.

"I said, 'You know, I was just jiving,' " Boskin recalls. "I protested and said I couldn’t do it. She said, 'Oh no, you must call him.' "

Later that day, Boskin got on the phone with an AP reporter in New York City. "I said, 'I know nothing about April Fools' Day.' And the reporter said something like, 'You’re being modest.... What are the origins?' "

Boskin relented, spinning a yarn that the holiday originated in Istanbul in the court of Constantine when "the jesters decided to unionize." The king was so amused that he agreed to give up the throne to a jester for the day. The first-ever April fool was Kugel (Boskin thought of the name because his friend especially enjoyed the Jewish pudding), who declared it a day of absurdities...

If you run into someone today who tells you he/she KNOWS the origins of this prankish day, beware. It's probably an April Fool's joke. :P