April frauds: three manufactured holidays make fools of us all.

• Author: Starr, Tama

Expressions of spring silliness aren't limited to April Fool's Day, the traditional prankster's holiday that targets only the willing and the gullible. Three stupid celebrations of more recent vintage make suckers of the whole population.

Earth Day is a designer holiday crafted to dramatize the ascendancy of style over substance, a feel-good feast enabling sentimentalists to live out the ultimate power fantasy: patronizing an entire planet. Nobody has calculated the cost of Earth Day in terms of wasted resources, but during the nearly 30 years since its founding, this foolish fete has surely racked up billions.

Earth Day promises salvation through consumerism: If only we would buy the right stuff - electric cars, herbal remedies, hemp-fiber clothing, biodegradable detergent the world would be drenched in virtue. It presumes that individual purchasing and packaging decisions trump the effects of volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, ice ages, meteor storms, and solar flares.

Earth Day's hallmark is contempt for the poor, especially the working poor, for whom photo ops are low on the agenda, and for business people and workers in general. Only those who value consumption above production can so disdain the folks who create value.

Two years ago, New York's planet lovers celebrated Earth Day by closing off 10 midtown blocks of Park Avenue, headquarters of some of the country's largest corporations, for the apparent purpose of raising the consciousness of working people by preventing them from getting to work. Bemused office and delivery personnel stood by while green confetti was strewn about and Earth-friendly junk was hawked from kiosks, while politicians with bullhorns proclaimed their love for the Earth and disabled people tried in vain to gain access to their normal transportation. Two million brochures extolling the wonderfulness of Our Planet (printed on recycled paper, which everyone knows costs nothing to produce or clean up) were distributed in the streets and at bridges and tunnels (so that drivers entering the city could pause for a moment after paying their tolls to reflect on the bounty of nature before tossing the brochures out the window).

Soreheads who wondered why the event couldn't be held in a park, where some actual nature was available for contemplation and where Earth Day pollution wouldn't exacerbate the ordinary annoyances of city life, were reviled as planet-hostile. "I think everyone should be willing to...