O.K., the photograph is a joke. We begin this new month, after all, on April 1, April Fool’s Day. This is my prank. That said and done, please be assured that I know that those who are fans of our beloved Laurel magazine and read this column are anything but fools. You’re in the know and in on the joke. The jocular “Falcon Nesting” photo above is decades old and has been passed around by many. April Fool’s Day is centuries old and has been endured by millions over the years. Its history is both arguable and moot. The historical speculation I like is that April Fools’ Day dates to Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, after the Council of Trent, when the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar. On the Julian calendar the new year began with the spring equinox around April 1. Those who lagged in making the change and continued to celebrate a new year on April 1 became the butt of jokes and were called April fools. The best April Fool’s Day prank is credited to the BBC in its 1957 broadcast of the program Panorama. A two-and-a-half-minute video was broadcast about the “spaghetti harvest” in southern Switzerland. The video, seen by an estimated 8 million viewers, showed a family in the canton of Tacino in southern Switzerland harvesting a bumper crop of the pasta from a “spaghetti tree” and laying it out to dry in the sun. The fulsome harvest, viewers were told, followed a mild winter and the disappearance of a fictitious Spaghetti Weevil. Some of the footage was shot in a hotel in Castagnola, Switzerland. The voice-over describing the harvest festival was by respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby. The archived video can be viewed online at youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU. At the time, this Italian pasta was not well known in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water. Many knew better, of course, but hundreds of viewers called in asking how to grow spaghetti trees. They were told, tongue in cheek, to “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.” We might not be bothered by this pesky day in the future because Congress is considering a bill that would eliminate the designation of April 1 as April Fool’s Day.
by William McReynolds
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