April Fool's Day
April Fool's Day
As winter ends and spring begins, people’s moods tend to improve due to more sunny days. Maybe that is why many ancient festivals celebrating hilariousness and jokes would fall ten days after the March Equinox. April Fool’s Day (or All Fools Day), a worldwide observance on April 1, was probably based on these celebrations. Its exact origins are shrouded in mystery, but the rules of the holiday are rather clear. The jokers aim to make fun of their friends or family, setting traps, telling fake stories or sending their victims on “fool’s errands”. Although there are various traditions concerning the holiday in different countries, not every single culture has its particular customs. Hence, though the UK and Ireland have established some additional rules for their April Fool’s Day, the US, Australia and New Zealand follow the popular appeal and simple guidelines.
The holiday has probably descended from the Roman festival Hilaria or a similar Celtic festivity honoring the god of humor, Lod. Within hundreds of years, many festivals in the Middle Ages bore the name “The Feast of Fools”; the custom of making practical jokes probably came from Spain. The tradition of fooling people has been documented in some works of literature, like Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” from the Canterbury Tales (1392). In 1686, the British writer and philosopher John Aubrey mentioned April 1 as “Fooles holy day”. Some state that the holiday originated from the fact that the French laughed at the European countries who had not recognized the January 1 celebration of New Year’s Day after the adoption of Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, but remained by the date of March 25 (close to April 1). Were this theory true, the British would have adopted a tradition of April Fool’s Day long before they accepted the Gregorian calendar (which was in the 18th century).
Another legend is that the town of Gotham, Nottinghamshire fooled King John in the 13th century that they were mad people so that the monarch be discouraged to claim parts of their land. April 1 was supposedly a commemoration of that prank. The holiday was officially adopted in France in 1564, and even though England has not proclaimed it thus, the authorities in London in 1698 fooled many of its inhabitants into believing that there was a lion-washing service taking place in the Tower of London. As the holiday was becoming prominent on the Isles, the Scots called it “Taily Day”, referring to the pigtail that the joker tried to pin to his or her victim’s back.
The tradition developed in the United States in the 20th century: in 1934, American papers printed a photo of a man flying supposedly thanks to the power of his lungs. The “media pranks” were popularized mainly in the Americas and in the United Kingdom. In 1957, BBC emitted a program about Swiss farmers who picked spaghetti from trees.
There are a few interesting traditions concerning April Fool’s Day. In Great Britain and Ireland, there is a rule that all jokes performed after noon made a fool out of the joker. Their main tactics for pranks are: giving someone a fake errand, sending an “important letter” to someone through the victim of a joke that writes “send the fool further”, or simply lying and telling fake stories. The last one is a custom that the worldwide media undertook. In 1975 in Australia, the TV station This Day Tonight announced that “metric time” would soon be introduced in the country. The National Public Radio in the United States made it an annual tradition to make up elaborate news items for the public on April 1.
April Fool’s Day is not a legal holiday in either of the aforementioned countries, hence every institution, business and school operate according to their regular timetables. The observance is simply a time to joke and laugh, and maybe exercise practical creativity and the art of deception.