Signora Sheila

The Italian name for April Fool’s Day is Pesce d’Aprile, or April Fool’s Fish. It comes from the children’s custom of sticking a paper fish on the back of a classmate. Since that child is the only one who does not know about the fish, he or she becomes the April Fool or the fish.

We must assume that Italians consider fish to be rather stupid or foolish. And without a doubt, they are not among the most intelligent animals around. I mean, who’s ever heard of a trained fish?

But tradition traces the origins of April Fool’s Day back to the 1500’s. According to the old Julian calendar, the new year began on April 1st. When the Gregorian calendar came into use, New Year’s Day became January 1st. And anyone who forgot about the change became an April Fool.

Greatest hoax of all

But the greatest April Fool’s hoax of all time was the BBC’s 1957 Spaghetti Tree Hoax. The show featured a family in the southern Italian-speaking part of Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a tree!

Many people called the BBC after this news item, some to tell them that spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees. But others wanted to know how to grow a spaghetti tree!

A spaghetti tree! Wouldn’t that be useful? Think of all the money we could save! And it would be so easy to have organic pasta!

I find the spaghetti tree more amusing than the paper fish. But then, I’m not a joke-loving school kid. Few people would fall for the spaghetti tree hoax these days. Pasta is much more common in England now, and is eaten all over the world. So if you’re planning a joke for your friends, the April Fool’s fish might work better than the spaghetti tree hoax!

Anyway, enjly watching the video! We’re off to eat seafood – no April Fool’s joke about it!

Happy Pesce d’Aprile to you all!

Learn more about this hoax by watching this video.

📷 Image credit: spaghetti tree by Robert Couse-Baker, CC BY 2.0