“Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two”--Chaucer
April Fools' Day is an informal holiday celebrated in many places around the world on 1 April. Though people do not shut down their workplaces for the celebration, they perhaps do not want to miss playing practical jokes on their nearest and dearest, calling them 'April Fool'. It also finds its way into media and press.
It is not uncommon with Silicon Valley companies like Google, yahoo, Facebook playing pranks on their users too. This year they probably provide you with a game, or an application, or a puzzle to do. In most cases, you will end up accomplishing something spoofy! After a protracted, ostensibly insoluble and labyrinthine process, you will regret you could have opted for not starting the game in the first place!
But in comparison with other carnivals such as Mardi Gras that brings moments of revelry, April Fools' Day comes up with jokes, which in most cases look feeble. And perhaps you will not need to go far to understand why.
For one thing, no one is sure of its genesis. Theories chronicling its beginning proliferate, but three of them dominate the rest. In Medieval Rome, where wild revelries were few and far between for papal restrictions, for instance, people on the lookout of bacchanalia could indulge only in the festivities of the New Year. The Roman New Year would fall on the day of the Feast of Annunciation on 25 March, and it was a weeklong celebration, ending on 1 April. Cultural historians speculate it could be the birth of the day.
This tradition did not take much time to spread across the Christian Europe. Celebrating the New Year on 1 April, which also coincides with the Feast of Annunciation, became more than a ritual. It became part of religious life. But because the popes were unrestrained in corruption, enforcing tithes and indulgent tickets to the laity, people found Christendom a suffocating regime. In the sixteenth century, the French started reverting to the pagan New Year, which would begin with 1 January. Gradually people elsewhere in Europe followed in the footsteps, adopting 1 January as the beginning of the calendar. The people who were not aware of the transition kept on celebrating the New Year during the last week of March through 1 April instead of 1 January. And they became the objects of jokes and hoaxes such as placing a paper fish on their backs and were also called "poisson d'avril" (April fish) meaning an easy to fool person. Interestingly, this theory is fraught with problems too, sounding a sweeping generalisation and failing to find popularity with all.
The last dominant theory involves a story of the betrothal of Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which took place in 1381. It is often said that Chaucer's story of a vain cock deceived by a clever fox in Nun's Priest's Tale from his Canterbury Tales was meant to celebrate the marriage betrothal. In the poem, he says, “Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two”, which literally means 'on 32 March'. Since March has only 31 days, which either the poet could not take note of or the readers misread, 1 April then becomes the day. And people started playing elaborate jokes on others to celebrate the marriage engagement!
None of the three theories sounded plausible enough to bolster people's morale. For another thing, unlike carnivals, which encourage a rebel spirit against oppression, routine life and overpowering religion, April Fool's Day has nothing of the sort. Probably that is why, while discussing the carnivals in world cultural history, cultural critic and literary theorist Michael Bakhtin left the day out.
There is also another noticeable reason for its unpopularity. April Fool's Day has a tainted history. People, especially many Muslims around the world, believe that in 1482 the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile embarked on a life-long mission to wipe out the Muslim Emirate of Granada in Spain. Although their coordinated efforts culminated in the surrender of Muhammad XII of Granada on 2 January 1492, many Muslims believe that they played an elaborate joke on the Alhambra palace on 1 April that year. For such a controversial history, the day could not find popularity in many parts of the world.
Relatively immaculate carnivals have also done much to eclipse its popularity. Mardi Gras in America, Solo in Indonesia, Nice Carnival in France and Holi in India with their untainted origins have appealed to revelers. A few of them like Holi in India have transcended the national and religious boundary and spilled over into other cultures. They have also a very clear purpose too. Most of them inspire revelers to suspend the routine life for a while and enjoy themselves in unbounded freedom. Maybe that is why the jokes of April Fool's Day fall flat in many parts of the world.
Sources: the Absolute Verdict, the Planet Granada, the Eventfinder, the History of Islam, History Today, and the New York Times.
*Zaynul Abedin completed his BA in English from the University of Dhaka.