The “real” Story of April Fool’s Day (and Why It’s Not Funny Anymore)
Today is April 1st, April Fool’s Day, an annual holiday dedicated to pranks, hoaxes and all kinds of jokes and tomfoolery. But why? Where did this artificial holiday come from? Why do we do this to each other and when will we finally stop ?
These are surprisingly complex questions, and April Fool’s Day has been around for a surprisingly long time. Back in 1708, the British newspaper Apollo asked the question : “Where does the custom of April Fools’ Day originate?” and gave unconvincing answers. So, we know that the tradition of April Fool’s jokes goes back centuries, but the exact origin of the holiday still remains a mystery. There are theories, but they all sound like nonsense.
Origin Story of April Fool’s Day #1: The Great French Calendar Switch of 1582.
The most popular (but still probably nonsense) April Fool’s origin story blames France. It goes like this: Back in 1563, the Council of Trent declared that Christ is fully present in both the consecrated bread and the wine of the Eucharist. But more importantly, he decreed that Catholic countries should use the Gregorian calendar instead of the Julian calendar.
King Charles IX of France ordered his country to join the transition by 1582, but when that day came, some citizens did not comply. (The French can be stubborn.) April 1st is the start of the new year in the Julian calendar, and some people either didn’t know about the new calendar or didn’t like it because they continued to celebrate the new year on April 1st.
To get everyone back in order, people started mocking the calendar truths by making fun of them. Since the first day of April coincided with the end of Lent, and fish was a popular Lenten gift, giving a fool a fake fish was considered a hilarious joke (or so the story goes). This evolved into the French April 1st joke of attaching a paper fish to someone’s back, which is still practiced today, mostly by schoolchildren; This is why the French call April 1 Poisson d’Avril, or “April fish.”
However, I prefer the alternate origin story of the “April Fish”: the real joke was to secretly stick the fish in someone’s pocket and hope they wouldn’t notice until it started to stink. This is a timeless comedy that needs no explanation.
So, case closed, right? “April Fool’s Day began in France when the calendar changed.” No. Probably not (April Fool’s joke!), because the first written mention of this day dates back to about two decades earlier, in 1561. “Refereyn vp verzendekens dach” by the Flemish writer Eduard De Dene “Twelck den eersten April te zyne plach” is a comic poem about a nobleman sending his gullible servant on a series of ridiculous false errands on April 1st. Along with a message that remains relevant today. (“You are a fool if you believe what anyone says on April 1st”), the poem makes it clear that seasonal pranks were already a widespread and well-known phenomenon decades before the calendar changed in France. Unlike many holidays with changing customs and rituals, April Fools’ Day appears to be celebrated much the same now as it was in the 1500s.
Origin of April Fool’s Day #2: The Ancient Romans Did It
Some historians have dug all the way back to ancient Rome to find evidence of April Fools. At that time, the days of rejoicing were called “Hilaria.” People had private hilarias, such as on wedding days, or public ones, such as the Hilaria Matris Deûm, celebrated on March 25 as part of a 10-day festival in honor of Cybele, the mother of the gods. After several festival days of fasting, castration, mourning and flagellation, Hilaria gave everyone the opportunity to enjoy some much-needed fun, games and orgies (I assume).
The most striking event of Hilaria Matrice Deum was the masquerade. On this day, you could imitate anyone, including government officials. So maybe it was a real April Fool’s Day? The evidence seems a little shaky to me. The time of year is about right, but the connection to pranks and practical jokes seems tenuous: dressing up as someone who’s making fun of them isn’t the same as tricking them into eating a donut filled with mayonnaise.
Since no one knows where or when April Fool’s Day originated, I will say that it came from Denmark. From there it probably spread to the rest of Europe.
Regardless of its origins, by the late 1600s April Fool’s Day was so firmly established that newsletters saw no reason to explain it to readers. For example, the April 2, 1698 issue of Dokes’s News contains an article that reads: “Yesterday, the first of April, several persons were sent into the Tower Moat to see the lions being washed.” (Sending fools to watch lions being washed is funny.)
April Fools’ Day goes from private to public
Whether it was gluing a paper fish onto someone’s back or sending tourists to a lion wash, the first few centuries of April Fool’s pranks were personal. It was not an official holiday; it was just a group of people making fun of their friends or strangers on the street. But as society has moved from individual to more mediated experiences, the nature of April pranks has also changed. Beginning in the early 1900s, newspapers began publishing fake stories on April 1st. Radio then started doing this, telling listeners that they were about to be attacked by wasps or the world was going to end . In the 1950s, television came into play; even the staid BBC pranked viewers with a fake story about a spaghetti harvest in Switzerland .
The most popular form of April Fools’ Day pranks, fake ads on the Internet, are in keeping with the state of our culture. Traditionally, pranks were fun for at least the person playing them, but modern April Fools’ pranks aren’t fun for anyone . The audience knows this will happen so no one is actually fooled, and the tech and media companies that “prank” people do so because they want clicks and engagement to further enhance their brand image. This is the opposite of fun. The only good thing about April Fools’ Day was that it was a homegrown, unofficial folk holiday of the people. Daring people, but still. April Fool’s Day is now fully corporate approved.
Why April Fool’s Day Must Die
There’s really no research on this, but strictly from a personal “I’ve been on the Internet for a long time” perspective, the popularity of online April Fool’s jokes has been declining for several years and will hopefully fizzle out soon. Nobody needs a holiday that has sacrifices . In the era of disinformation, every day is April 1; We are constantly taken for fools . We are bombarded by people using technology to try to deceive us, whether it be robo-criminals sending text messages to steal money from our bank accounts, influencers monetizing our envy with filters and carefully chosen camera angles, AI-generated deepfakes of the Pope in a Down Jacket, or the more subtle but pervasive hoaxes of modern politics and commerce in general. Hearing some idiot say, “Ha ha, you got scammed” isn’t funny anymore, if it ever was.