April Holidays, Traditions and More

Ali Canary, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Mar 27, 2009 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

April starts right off with a holiday, April Fool's Day, so stay on your toes lest you be taken in by a prank. Easter and Passover frequently, but not always, occur in April as well, and Earth Day occurs on the 22nd. Although it isn't the official start of Spring, it's often when the weather stops blustering long enough to feel springlike, although Robert Frost said "April is the cruelest month" for its extremely changeable weather. But even though "April showers bring May flowers", there are plenty of interesting things to know about the month of April besides the fact that it's rainy!

Monthly Observances

April is National Card and Letter Writing Month, so make sure to keep in touch with your loved ones via snail mail, before the whole postal system goes down the tubes (also, postage increase yet again on May 16, so this is the time to use up all those free notecards the charities having been sending you!); wouldn't you love to get something in your mailbox besides bills and junk? So would everybody else! April is also the National Month for decorating; DNA, genomics and stem-cell education and awareness; gardening, humor, kites, landscape architecture, occupational therapy (I've had jobs that made me want to see a shrink, too); Parkinson's awareness, pecans, poetry, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual assault awareness. April is National Knuckles Down Month, although I do not know what that is (sounds kind of painful), as well as being both Child Abuse Prevention Month and Youth Sports Safety Month (hmm, is there a connection here?)

April is also the International Month for Caesarean awareness, customer loyalty, and pet first aid. Also the International Twit Award is presented in April. I suppose a certain ex-president has received it the last 8 years, so we're going to have to come up with somebody new to nominate. Octo-Mom, anyone?

Weirdest Holiday: International "Louie Louie" Day, on the 11^th, because it's not just Americans who can appreciate a badly-enunciated song with a seven-word chorus you can sing whilst incredibly drunk.

April Traditions

Flower: sweet pea - blissful pleasure

Birthstone: diamond - innocence, success, faith Aries's gem: diamond

Zodiac sign: Aries (1-20) and Taurus (21-30; see April for details). Aries the Ram is known as the baby of the zodiac, being the first sign and representing the first several years of life. As a result of this, Aries fire-sign characteristics of excitability, adventurousness and experimentation are multiplied, as children share these same characteristics. Aries people are loads of fun to be with, but can be, as you may expect, immature and careless. Best friends: Leo and Sagittarius. Best love matches: Libra, Gemini and Aquarius.

Famous Birthdays: Hans Christian Andersen (2^nd), Marlon Brando (3^rd), Gregory Peck (5^th), Harry Houdini (6^th), Billie Holiday (7^th), Hugh Hefner (9^th), Omar Sharif (10^th), Thomas Jefferson (13^th), Pete Rose (14^th), Leonardo da Vinci (15^th), Dudley Moore (19^th), Queen Elizabeth II (21^st), Roy Orbison (23^rd), Al Pacino (25^th), Carol Burnette (26^th), Duke Ellington (29^th).