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In a nationally syndicated
news story in 1983, a Boston University history professor named Joseph
Boskin explained the origins of April Fools Day.
According to Professor
Boskin, it all started when a gaggle (or should that be giggle?) of
court jesters told the Roman Emperor Constantine that they could do a
better job of running the empire better than he was doing. I’m
thinking this was a little like what Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jon
Stewart do to President Bush in their comic monologues every night,
with this exception: if you displeased the emperor you could be
playing your next engagement in the Coliseum with a bunch of hungry
lions.
But evidently the jesters
caught Constantine on a playful day. He invited one of them, a fellow
named Kugel, to come to the palace, where the emperor turned the
scepter over to the jester for one day. According to Professor Boskin,
Kugel didn’t lead any armies into battle or anything like that during
his one day on the throne, but he did send out an edict calling for a
day of absurdity. Evidently Constantine liked the idea, and it became
an annual event.
“In a way it was a very
serious day,” Professor Boskin explained in that 1983 newspaper story.
“In those times fools were really wise men. It was the role of
jesters to put things in perspective with humor.”
The interesting thing
about Professor Boskin’s explanation of the beginning of April Fool’s
Day is that it sounds reasonable and logical even though it was
completely fabricated. He made it all up as a sort of historical
April Fool’s joke, only the Associated Press picked it up and ran it
as an April Fool’s day feature without knowing that it was a joke. It
was weeks before the AP figured out the hoax, but by then the story
had already been printed as factual in dozens of newspapers across the
country.
I don’t know about you,
but part of me thinks that is pretty funny. It’s sort of nice to see
the media get its self-important nose tweaked every once in a while –
especially on April Fool’s Day. But the other part of me knows
perfectly well that if I had been one of those newspaper editors I
probably would have printed the story, too.
What can I say? I’m
gullible. It’s like Mark Twain said: “April 1st. This is
the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three
hundred and sixty-four.”
And I’m the perfect April Fool. I’m the kid who
spent an entire day at school looking foolish because I had a “Kick
Me” sign taped to my back. I’m the one child my mother could fool
with her traditional April Fool’s Day caper of taking the sugar out of
the sugar bowl and filling it with salt (you’d think I’d learn after
that first year of eating a big spoonful of salty Corn Flakes,
wouldn’t you? But no – two or three years later I was still falling
for it). And I’m the one member of the family who took a second bite
of some April Fool’s Day pancakes into which my wife, Anita, had
cooked a nice, round piece of cloth. In fact, I think I’ve still got
a cloth crown on one of my molars.
So, OK – I’m gullible. I admit it. I want to
believe, to trust, to rely, to accept. It’s my nature. Heaven knows,
life gives us enough reasons for doubt and mistrust. I don’t want to
spend even one day of my life looking for ulterior motives in every
person, every situation, every Corn Flake and every pancake.
Either that, or I’m just plain . . . you know . .
. foolish. Like those editors who printed the professor’s story. In
which case I must once again cite Twain: “Let us be thankful for the
fools,” he said. “But for them the rest of us could not succeed.”
Even if I’m one of “them” instead of one of “us.”
© 2007 by Joseph Walker |
