National Honesty Day: The Truth, and Nothing But

National Honesty Day is today (April 30th), which means that, in theory, you should be able to ask any question you want and get a straightforward answer that’s relatively free of fibs, lies, and falsehoods. Assuming, of course, that others have heard of the day and all that it entails. Otherwise, chances are you’re going to get the same old rigmarole from everyone you engage.

Want to know where a politician really stands on a touchy subject? Now’s the time to ask. Want to know if your true love is being as faithful as he or she claims? Fire away. If everyone plays by the rules today, there should be one or two fewer episodes of Maury for us to watch this season, but it’s a small price to pay to get people to be truthful with one another.

Here in the States, National Honesty Day was designed to celebrate the truthfulness of a pair of past presidents, namely George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Of course, considering that the whole Washington/cherry tree story was a total fabrication to illustrate the guy’s honesty, you could say that the holiday was founded on a lie. We’ll just sweep that little tidbit under the proverbial rug for now. No sense spoiling a good thing.

M. Hirsh Goldberg, former press secretary and author of several books, created the holiday back in the 1990’s while doing research for his tome “The Book of Lies”, a collection of words, sentences, and paragraphs that has been translated into several language. Goldberg felt that the holiday should come at the end of April since the first day of the month encourages people to spread tall tales and complete fabrications. Then again, maybe Goldberg really came up with the idea in order to sell more books. That’s just idle speculation on my part.

Will you be participating in National Honesty Day? Let us know in the comments section. In the meantime, why not see what folks on Twitter are saying about being truthful for 24 long hours.