Lost in Translation: Why I'm Glad I'm Not Teaching English on April Fool's Day

I've never been very good at April Fool's jokes. As a child, (before caller i.d.), I made a few lame prank phone calls . . . to a funeral home to ask for "Mr. Box" . . . to the zoo to ask for "Mr. Lyon" . . . to the Diamond F Ranch asking for my "NEIGH-bor." Other than that, I've been the victim more than the perpetrator!

Yesterday I taught two English classes and highlighted the last day of March and the first day of April. We practiced writing the dates in numbers . . . 03/31/09 and 04/01/09 . . . but since I don't teach English on Wednesdays, I never bothered to bring up the concept of "All Fools Day". Since we will break next week for Holy Week, I'm preparing a short segment on Easter for my Thursday classes . . . speaking of lost in translation and cultural collisions--that's going to be enough of a challenge for my oral (mostly pre-literate) East African Muslim students! I said "I'm preparing it" (my middle initial should have been P. for Procrastinate), but in the process, I became curious about the origins of April Fool's traditions.

Some say All Fools Day began after the Reformation, when New Year's Day was changed from April 1 to January 1--evidently, the news didn't spread consistently throughout the land, leaving some as "fools" . . . hmm. Actually it probably goes even farther back, because a few years earlier, the Romans often set aside days to play jokes on each other during spring celebrations.

If you're a bit ethnocentric, thinking everything originated in America, you're wrong . . . though early colonists from France, England and Scotland enjoyed sending people on "fools errands" like obtaining a copy of The History of Adam's Grandfather! In England, you're a "noodle" if you get pranked; in France you're the April "fish" if someone tapes a paper fish to your back without your knowledge; Scotland really does it up big--April Fool's Day lasts 48 hours--if you get tricked you're called an April "gawk" (cuckoo bird). Worse, Day 2 is full of pranks involving one's err-- backside . . . can you imagine me explaining that to my ESL classes? Maybe tomorrow's brief explanation of the Easter holy days versus the American Easter holiday won't be as difficult as I thought . . .