April Fool's Day: A Holiday and a Mindset That Deserve to Fade

It's possible that April Fool's isn't disappearing at the elementary school level. 

However, I rarely hear references to it these days. When I searched for books on the topic, 90% were kids' books about some hilarious joke that one kid played on another.

I located only two books on April Fool's Day itself (and both were over three decades old): where it came from, how it came about. The conclusion is: nobody knows. It is possibly tied to pagan rituals--or to medieval times--or...

I suspect that like many holidays, it got promoted and THEN history accrued to it. 

I don't have a problem with the holiday's fading importance. I've always considered teasing simply a form of bullying, it rests so much on a forced positive reaction by the person being teased. 

Shenanigans bother me a lot less. In several children's books of my youth, kids on Halloween tip over outhouses, an entirely respectable shenanigan! Nobody--including the kids--pretends that they aren't annoying someone and breaking rules. They know they are. In fact, when they get caught and punished, the punishment is treated as fair-dues. 

Click for the full video.

Likewise, Tim Allen as Tim Taylor not only brings the shenanigans on himself (and often pays a price), the shenanigans are legitimately hilarious. 

In comparison, one thing simply being something else (salt instead of sugar) strikes me as the essence of "So what?"

When I was young, April Fool's Day always seemed to rest on a similar kind of pretense or cognitive dissonance. People could do nasty things and other people were supposed to accept the nastiness or be labeled "spoil sports" for not getting with the program. That is, the joke wasn't a shenanigan and it wasn't a risk. It was an excuse to bully and get away with it, often by those who wouldn't appreciate a response in kind.

In comparison, carnivals were a chance

for everyone to act out.

It's basically the same reason I loathe current-day "the group means so well, you must comply with the group's mindset; otherwise, you will be the kind of person who should..." be sent to therapy, lose your job, acceptably get called names, acceptably get despised, acceptably get put-in-your-place, acceptably get lectured, acceptably get ostracized. 

All the abstract theorizing and noble intentions in the world don't disguise the authoritarian impulse--

--which makes me wonder if April Fool's was intended to be an outlet for that authoritarian impulse. Maybe the reason it is dying is because everyday is now treated like April Fool's Day. 

I apologize for the cynicism! I'm not one to believe that the world is getting worse and worse--but I do believe that social orders experience what C.S. Lewis labeled "troughs." I find it helpful to know that a desire to leave the trough exists. Check out the Free Press: Mobs, Scapegoats, and Courage