Nobody really knows, but there are several explanations. Here's my favorite from InfoPlease.com:Constantine and Kugel
Another explanation of the origins of April Fools' Day was provided by Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University. He explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job of running the empire. Constantine, amused, allowed a jester named Kugel to be king for one day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.
"In a way," explained Prof. Boskin, "it was a very serious day. In those times fools were really wise men. It was the role of jesters to put things in perspective with humor."
This explanation was brought to the public's attention in an Associated Press article printed by many newspapers in 1983. There was only one catch: Boskin made the whole thing up. It took a couple of weeks for the AP to realize that they'd been victims of an April Fools' joke themselves.
April Fool's Day should remind us how easy it is to fool folks. Boskin's explanation sounds reasonable and it came from a man "with authority" as a history professor. Now what if Prof. Boskin wasn't just joking but really wanted to fool people. How hard would it be? Suppose he was a politician and decided to use a crisis to hoodwink an entire nation into accepting things they would never fall for in normal times.
Something to think about. Meanwhile, go out to the mailbox, there's a stimulus check waiting there for you. (April Fool! It's really a dead fish from Rahm Emanuel.)
You can't mean that Barack Obama is an April Fool's joke? Maybe we'll wake up tomorrow and it will all be over ...
ReplyDeleteI do think that we're looking at how to pervert and destroy a representative republic. This will be a chapter of a political science book at least as authoritative as "The Prince" in the farflung future ... if there is one.