Thoughts On The Meaning Of April Fools Day

Some Thoughts on the Meaning of the April Fools Day Published by Jo Hedesan on http://www.esotericoffeehouse.com/ on 28 March 2009

It’s almost April Fools Day, and you should be either thinking of a prank or considering how to avoid being ‘fooled’. That’s because, on 1st of April, there are only two types of people out there: the pranksters and those being played a prank. Nobody has been able to decipher the actual origin of April Fools Day. Theories abound from attributing it to the Bible and the Gregorian calendar change to the Holi festival in India, which has similar characteristics. You can read all about it in the Wikipedia article (1). I’m interested so much in where the celebration came from but why it survives to this day. What makes us still enjoy playing the April Fools game in this day-and-age? Before answering that question, it is perhaps a good idea to look at the characteristics of this informal celebration. As we all know, it always occurs on the 1st of April, which is the first month of real spring (after the spring equinox) and used to represent the first day of the Julian New Year (2). Thus, it is a time of unclear, tentative beginnings, where things are not yet settled in their ordered pattern. The weather is still capricious, windy and cold; winter wrestles with the spring, and nothing is certain yet. This time of disorder, uncertainty and ambiguity is an ideal period for the emergence of the ‘fool’. The fool is a person socially defined as ridiculous, inferior or incompetent (3) or, an unintelligent person, somebody considered to lack good sense or judgment (4). The fool is someone who is made fun at. We can see from these definitions that the fool is a role assigned by the others, or perhaps assumed by someone by himself or herself – it does not exist outside a social environment. Thus, a fool is ‘made’ (5). A good example of ‘making a fool’ is certainly the April Fool prank. The prankster seeks to prove the ‘prankee’ as a fool – a gullible or weakminded person. If the ‘prankee’ falls for the joke, he has been made into fool. Is that the whole story? Not exactly. We should remember that, particularly in medieval Europe, the fool was not only the person made fun at, but the person making fun of the others. Just as the society at large exercised their right of making the clown a ‘fool’, the clown reciprocated by making society a fool back. It was this type of sublime ambiguity that Shakespeare emphasized in his imagery of the fool who possesses deeper wisdom or larger wits than the people of higher social standing (5). In the April Fools tradition, then, the fool is not only the ‘prankee’ but the ‘prankster’ as well. The fool pokes fun at the people around him, in a similar way to the age-old court jester or clown. Hence on 1st of April everyone is a fool, making fun at each other independent of status and position. It has been emphasized that the April fool has a seasonal counterpart in the Halloween trick-or-treater (6). However, Halloween pranksters are anonymous: they trick without having to reveal who they are (7). By comparison, the relationship established through

the April Fool prank is much more personal and individual. You know who your prankster is. This matter suggests the much more benign nature of the April Fools jokes: here we head into order, not into winter chaos. This benign nature is also suggested by the ritual of the April prank. First of all, the prank occurs in early morning, not at night as in the case of Halloween. The early morning is obviously still a time of uncertainty, when the sun is beginning to rise but has not reached its full strength. After a long night’s sleep, people feel a bit oozy, unclear and unsure of where they are – this is a good moment to play a prank, before they actually realize that this is 1st of April. If the prankster waits too long, the sun will dispel all uncertainties and the prank will no longer have an effect: undoubtedly, that’s one of the reasons why, in New Zealand, the children that play pranks too late in the day are laughed at and called fools by the rest (8). Moreover, the prank involves two parties: the prankster and the ‘prankee’, whom we both suggested to be ‘fools’. The prank usually supposes a face-to-face interaction, which allows the testing of both the prankster and the ‘prankee’s’ reactions (9). It is an exchange where the two sides match their strengths, and someone must emerge as the established ‘fool’. However, this is not a real ‘war’ – it is a game. Getting hurt or suffering is not the purpose of the prank; it is not supposed to have some real consequences. In fact, the whole exercise is simply supposed to expose the relativism of the ‘fool’ concept. Nobody should get hurt – when someone does, the whole April Fools game is denied. At the end of the game, things are supposed to go back to normal – normal status and position are restored. The ‘fools’ roles disappear. It is possible that back in immemorial times the jokes may have assigned some real social status, just in the way that sports competitions makes some winners and some losers. However, today the social status perpetuates before and after April Fools Day; the game is just a temporary suspension of social roles in favour of harmless fun. References (1) Wikipedia. (2009). April Fools Day. Online. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fool%27s_Day. Accessed on: 27 March 2009. (2), (7), (9) McEntire, N.C. (2002). Purposeful Deceptions of the April Fool. Western Folklore, 61(2), pp. 133-151. (3), (5) Klapp, O. E. (1949). The Fool as a Social Type. The American Journal of Sociology, 55 (2), pp. 157-162. (4) Encarta. (2009). Fool – Definition. Online. Available at: http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861612753/fool.html. Accessed on: 27 March 2009. (5) Wikipedia. (2009). Jester. Online. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester. Accessed on: 27 March 2009. (6) Dundes, A. (1989). April Fool and April Fish: Towards a Theory of Ritual Pranks, in Folklore Matters. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, pp. 98-111. (8) Sutton-Smith, B. (1981). The Folkstories of Children. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 6(2), pp. 14-16.