Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things by Charles Panati

Traditionally eaten at Easter, the twice-scored biscuits were first baked by the Saxons in honor of Eastre. The word “bun” itself derives from boun , Saxon for “sacred ox,” for an ox was sacrificed at the Eastre festival, and the image of its horns was carved into the celebratory cakes.
    The Easter treat was widespread in the early Western world. “Hot cross buns” were found preserved in the excavations at the ancient city of Herculaneum, destroyed in A.D . 79 along with Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
    Early church fathers, to compete with the pagan custom of baking ox-marked cakes, used in numerous celebrations, baked their own version, employing the dough used for the consecrated host. Reinterpreting the ox-horn image as a crucifix, they distributed the somewhat-familiar-looking buns to new converts attending mass. In this way, they accomplished threeobjectives: Christianized a pagan cake; gave the people a treat they were accustomed to; and subtly scored the buns with an image that, though decidedly Catholic, at a distance would not dangerously label the bearer “Christian.” The most desirable image on today’s hot cross buns is neither an ox horn nor a cross, but broad smears of glazed frosting.
    April Fool’s Day: 1564, France
    Many different explanations have been offered for the origins of April Fool’s Day, some as fanciful as April Fool jokes themselves.
    One popular though unlikely explanation focuses on the fool that Christ’s foes intended to make of him, sending him on a meaningless round of visits to Roman officials when his fate had already been sealed. Medieval mystery plays frequently dramatized those events, tracing Christ’s journey from Annas to Caiaphas to Pilate to Herod, then back again to Pilate. (Interestingly, many cultures have a practice, predating Christianity, that involves sending people on “fool’s errands.”)
    The most convincing historical evidence suggests that April Fooling originated in France under King Charles IX.
    Throughout France in the early sixteenth century, New Year’s Day was observed on March 25, the advent of spring. The celebrations, which included exchanging gifts, ran for a week, terminating with dinners and parties on April 1.
    In 1564, however, in beginning the adoption of the reformed, more accurate Gregorian calendar, King Charles proclaimed that New Year’s Day be moved back to January 1. Many Frenchmen who resisted the change, and others who merely forgot about it, continued partying and exchanging gifts during the week ending April 1. Jokers ridiculed these conservatives’ steadfast attachment to the old New Year’s date by sending foolish gifts and invitations to nonexistent parties. The butt of an April Fool’s joke was known as a poisson d’Avril , or “April fish” (because at that time of year the sun was leaving the zodiacal sign of Pisces, the fish). In fact, all events occurring on April 1 came under that rubric. Even Napoleon I, emperor of France, was nicknamed “April fish” when he married his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, on April 1, 1810.
    Years later, when the country was comfortable with the new New Year’s date, Frenchmen, fondly attached to whimsical April Fooling, made the practice a tradition in its own right. It took almost two hundred years for the custom to reach England, from which it came to America.
    Mother’s Day: 1908, Grafton, West Virginia
    Though the idea of setting aside a day to honor mothers might seem to have ancient roots, our observance of Mother’s Day is not quite a century old. It originated from the efforts of a devoted daughter who believed thatgrown children, preoccupied with their own families, too often neglect their mothers.
    That daughter, Miss Anna Jarvis, a West Virginia schoolteacher, set out to rectify the neglect.
    Born in 1864, Anna Jarvis attended school in Grafton, West Virginia. Her close ties with her mother made attending Mary Baldwin College, in Stanton,