April Fool’s day emerges small and sometimes bigger lies that serves a long-lasting custom that came from Europe several years ago.
Pranks have their honor on this particular day as young children make various jokes to tease each other. Of course, there are also several times when the mechanism of lying acts as an attraction to adults in their form of teasing.
However, let our noses grow only on this day, telling well-intentioned lies, which are not intended to harm anyone, except to trigger a lot of laughter!
Two versions of the custom origin
The first version claims that the custom of April Fool’s Day was initiated by the Celts, people of northwestern Europe, who were poor fishermen. When the fishing season began, on April 1st, the fish were very difficult to catch, no matter how good the fishermen were. So as not to “reveal” that they had not caught anything as every good fisherman prides himself on his catch, they lied about how many fish they had caught. Over time, this habit became a custom.
The second version comes from 16th century France. Until 1564 the French New Year was the first of April until King Charles the 9th changed it on January 1st. Some citizens reacted to this and continued to celebrate New Year’s Eve on April 1st, receiving New Year’s presents as a teaser from the others who celebrated New Year’s Eve on January 1st. As with fishermen, this teasing turned into a custom.
This custom also came to Greece with the central idea remaining the same: tell innocent lies in order to fool the “victim”. In some areas it is believed that anyone who manages to fool someone will have all the luck on their side for the rest of the year. In some other areas, they believe that the “attacker” will receive a good harvest in his crops while the receiver of the innocent lie will have bad luck for the rest of the year.
Pinocchio and Jepetto
Who hasn’t read Carlo Collodi’s classic tale of Jepetto who longed to have a child and built the wooden Pinocchio who, while lying, grew his nose? The story of Pinocchio has touched generations and generations, with his first appearance in animation in 1940 by Walt Disney until the last film by Mateo Garone.