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April Fool's Day
在欧美一些国家，4月1日是愚人节。这一天，人们以多种方式开周围人的玩笑，所以这一天总是能够引出许多笑话。
1st April is a day to be careful, or you could easily get tricked by someone. It’s called April Fool’s Day, a day when people traditionally like to try to make a fool of someone else and laugh at them.
There are lots of explanations about its origins (起源), but one of them is connected with the change in the calendar in the 16th century, which meant that 1st April was no longer the beginning of the year. Those who still celebrated the New Year on 1st April were called fools.
There are lots of tricks you can play on your friends. For example, you could wear a black sweater and pull a piece of white thread through it, so that people try to pull it off. You could change the time on someone’s alarm clock so that they’re late for work. Or glue a coin to the floor and see how many people try to pick it up.
All these are simple jokes which you might play on one other person or a few people. But there’s also a tradition of large companies attempting to fool a lot of people. For example, a hamburger restaurant once claimed that they were introducing a left-handed hamburger!
In particular, the media often try to make people believe something which is not true. Newspapers publish some ludicrous (荒谬的) stories every year, although some of them are actually true. It’s entertaining to try to guess which stories are true and which are not.
And one of the most famous hoaxes ever was broadcast by the BBC in 1957! A very serious news programme called Panorama reported on the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland, and showed pictures of farmers picking spaghetti from trees! Hundreds of people were taken in and wrote to the BBC asking how to grow their own spaghetti.April Fool's Day
愚人节是西方传统节日。那么，英国人是否都喜欢这个节日呢？来听听几位英国人的看法。
April Fool's Day is on 1 April. It's the custom in the UK to play a trick or a joke on someone on this day. If the person falls for the joke, then they are called an “April Fool”. In fact, it's only half a day because April Fool's Day finishes at midday. No more jokes after lunchtime, please!
Do people actually like April Fool's Day We asked some Brits this question. This is what they said:
I love April Fool's Day. It can be really good fun. I love playing tricks on people and I don't mind if people play tricks on me. It's one day of the year you can be really silly and have a laugh and it's OK. You have to be quite sensible for the other 364 days of the year, so I look forward to 1 April.
—Malisa
I don't like April Fool's Day. It makes me a bit nervous. I keep thinking someone is about to play a trick on me. When 12 o' clock passes I feel quite relieved that it's finished for another year!
—Johnny
April Fool's Day is a great idea. It's easy to forget the actual date and I always believe everything I read in the newspapers or watch on the TV news. I usually believe the big national hoaxes (恶作剧) and it always makes me laugh afterwards. It's good to remind us that maybe we shouldn't always believe everything we hear in the news.
—Louise
April Fool's Day is fun when you're young. I remember putting a plastic (塑料的) fried egg on my dad's plate for breakfast as a trick. He decided to cut it up and pretend to eat it! Now I think some of the tricks are a bit silly and people can be a bit cruel playing tricks on their “friends”!
—ClareApril Fool’s Day for tricks and laughs
April 1st is a day to be careful! It’s a day when people like to make a fool of someone else and have a good laugh at him. Classmates sometimes tie each other’s shoelaces (鞋带) to their chairs or desks. Teachers might hand out a surprise test to scare students before they realize it’s only a joke.
One April Fool’s Day, a group of students in my primary school class played a very funny trick on our teachers. They brought some chickens and set them free in our school dining hall. The chickens ran all around the dining hall. Feathers (羽毛) flew everywhere. Teachers ran after the chickens and tried to catch them. Finally, they caught four chickens. However, the chickens were wearing numbered tags (标签) around their necks. The teachers had only caught chickens No. 1, 2, 3, and 5. Where was the chicken No. 4
The teachers looked for it everywhere. Then they realized that the students had played another joke on them: there were only four chickens! The students had tricked them with the numbers on the chickens.
It’s been a long time since I was in primary school, but that April Fool’s Day remains one of my favorite memories.

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