What's With the Fish?

Ever since the chocolate shops started bringing out their Easter treats, I've noticed something strange. Even more than bunnies and chickens, there are chocolate fish everywhere. Now rabbits and chickens are cute and cuddly, but fish?

While Terry was here we almost made a sport out of finding chocolate fish all over the city. We figured out that they're called Poisson d'Avril, Fish of April, but was it because of Lent? That didn't make much sense because most of Lent is in March.

It turns out that it's really for April Fool's Day. Here's the history, straight off the internet:

In France the person fooled is known as poisson d'avril. This has been explained from the association of ideas arising from the fact that in April the sun quits the zodiacal sign of the fish. A far more natural explanation would seem to be that the April fish would be a young fish and therefore easily caught. The French traditionally celebrated this holiday by placing a dead fish on the back of friends. Today the fish is substituted by a paper cut out.

How they went from dead fish to paper fish to chocolate fish is beyond me, but I'm watching my back April 1.