History of April
Fool's Day
Holidays are celebrated for all sorts of reasons.
Some honor heroes, others commemorate religious events, but April
1 stands out as the only holiday that celebrates foolishness. April
Fools' Day, or All Fools Day, is an odd celebration with a strange
history. What other holiday asks us to play tricks and dupe our
unsuspecting friends and acquaintances?
There's some uncertainty about when and where this
bizarre tradition began, but the most accepted explanation traces
April Fools' Day back to 16th century France. Up until 1564, the
accepted calendar was the Julian calendar, which observed the beginning
of the New Year around April. According to "The Oxford Companion
to the Year," King Charles IX then declared that France would
begin using the Gregorian calendar, which shifted New Year's Day
to January 1.
Not everyone accepted this shifting of dates at the
same time. Some believed that the dates should not be shifted, and
it was these people who became the butt of some April jokes and
were mocked as fools. People sent gifts and invited them to bogus
parties. Citizens in the rural parts of France were also victims
of these jokes. In those days, news traveled slowly and they might
not have known about the shifting of dates for months or years.
These people also endured being made fun of for celebrating the
new year on the wrong day.
April Fool's Day Today
Today in France, people who are fooled on April 1
are called Poisson d'Avril, which literally means the "April
Fish." One common joke is to hook a cardboard fish to the back
of a person. What a fish has to do with April Fools' Day is not
clear. Some believe that the fish is tied to Jesus Christ, who was
often represented as a fish in early Christian times. Others say
the fish is related to the zodiac sign of Pisces, which is represented
by a fish, and falls near April. It's interesting to point out that
Napoleon earned the Poisson d'Avril monicker when he married Marie-Louise
of Austria on April 1, 1810.
It's probably no coincidence that April Fools' Day
is celebrated at the same time that two other similar holidays are
celebrated. In ancient Rome, the festival of Hilaria was thrown
to celebrate the resurrection of the god Attis. Hilaria is probably
the base word for hilarity and hilarious, which mean great merriment.
Today, Hilaria is also known as Roman Laughing Day. In India, the
Holi festival celebrates the arrival of spring. As a part of that
festival, people play jokes and smear colors on each other.
There's no clear connection between the modern observance
of April Fools' Day and these two ancient celebrations, which lends
most historians to accept the French explanation for how April Fools'
Day developed.
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