ESL 1021
Presentation 2 – Holiday or Tradition
Sample Speech
Good Evening, Everyone. How many of you like a good joke? Most of you, I’m sure. How many of you think you are a pretty good jokester or prankster? That’s someone who plays jokes or pranks on people. Some of the best jokes or pranks have been carried out on April Fool’s Day here in the United States. April Fool’s Day falls on April 1. Many people don’t pay much attention to it even though they know what day it is, but some people really take it seriously. For me, April Fool’s Day is an important day because my first child was born on that day. After I delivered Lucien on April Fool’s Day, my husband called our friends to tell them. They, of course, thought he was joking and didn’t believe him. Some of our friends even demanded to see the birth certificate as proof! So even though April Fool’s Day doesn’t get people the day off from work or school, doesn’t have a parade in its honor, and doesn’t warrant speeches from important people to comment on what a great holiday it is, it’s a fun holiday with a very long tradition. Tonight, I’m going to share the history of the holiday with you share some famous pranks pulled on April 1.
Many scholars believe April Fool’s Day began in France in 1582. In that year, the Catholic pope, Pope Gregory the thirteenth, instituted a new calendar, the one the Western world uses today. Unfortunately, that calendar changed New Year’s Day from April 1 to January 1. While the French government adopted this change, many ordinary people in France hated it. So for years after the date change, many people still celebrated New Year’s Day on April 1. Those more modern people made fun of the people who refused to change. The old-fashioned, out-of-date French citizens were called “fools” or “April fish,” which was an easily-caught native fish in France. These April Fish were often invited to fake New Year’s Day parties on April 1 as a prank, and paper fish were attached to their backs. The holiday spread to England and then to Scotland, and eventually, to the U.S.
Now that the holiday is here, it is hard to say which April
Fool’s prank is the best one in history.
But there have been 
some pretty good ones. In 1957, the British TV
network BBC announced that Swiss farmers were harvesting a bumper spaghetti
crop. The news story showed footage of Swiss farmers pulling strands of
spaghetti down from trees filled with spaghetti. Many viewers believed it and
some called the network to find out how to plant their own spaghetti tree.
In another prank in 1976, the British
astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio that Pluto would pass behind
Jupiter, causing a momentary gravitational alignment and a reduction in Earth's
gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact
moment of alignment, they would briefly float. One woman called to say she and
11 friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
And in 1998, Burger King published a full page ad in
"USA Today" announcing the introduction of a new sandwich: a
left-handed Whopper. According to the ad, the new sandwich was identical to the
original, but with all condiments rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of
left-handed customers.
While
these jokes are huge in scale and pranked a lot of people, small jokes are just
as fun. So, consider celebrating April Fool’s this year with a joke as easy as
putting a bowl of cereal and milk in the freezer before you go to sleep, and then
in the morning, offering to make breakfast for your roommate or relative. Then
you can watch them try to eat the frozen cereal with a spoon. For more ideas on
pranks to play on your friends and relatives, go to http://www.discoverfun.com/pranks/home.html
Thank
you for listening, and have a good night.
*** Information in this speech adapted from the article at http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=52003&format=html
*****Pictures of pranks taken from : http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/