This Saturday is April 1, April Fools’ Day, the annual holiday that celebrates pranking, hoaxes, and all manner of jack-a-napes and tomfoolery. But why? Where did this faux-holiday come from? Why do we do this to each other, and when will we finally just stop?
These are surprisingly tricky questions. As far back as 1708, the British newspaper Apollo asked, “Whence proceeds the custom of making April Fools?” and provided unconvincing answers. Although the tradition definitely goes back centuries, the exact origins of the holiday remains a mystery, which is honestly par for the course. The appropriate lack of certainty has led to a number of birth stories, all of which reek faintly of bullshit.
April Fools’ Day origin story #1: The great French calendar switch of 1582
The most popular still probably bullshit origin story blames France for the genesis of April Fools’ Day. It goes like this: Along with declaring that Christ is entirely present in both the consecrated bread and wine in the Eucharist, the Council of Trent in 1563 decreed that Catholic nations should use the Gregorian calendar instead of the Julian calendar.
France’s King Charles IX ordered his nation to get on board with the switch by 1582, but when the actual day rolled around, some citizens were non-compliant. (French people can be stubborn.) April 1 is beginning of a new year according to the Julian calendar, and some people either didn’t know about the new calendar or didn’t like it, because they went on celebrating new years on April 1.
To get everyone back in line, people started mocking calendar-truthers and playing tricks on them. Because the first day of April used to coincide with the end of Lent, and fish was popular Lenten gift, thus giving a fool a fake fish was thought to be a hilarious joke, or so the story goes. This evolved into the (very real) French April 1 prank of affixing a paper fish to someone’s back, which is still practiced to this day, mainly by school kids; it’s why French people call April 1 poisson d’avril, or April fish.
I like the alternative “April fish” origin story better though: The real prank was secretly sliding a fish in someone’s pocket and hoping they didn’t notice until it started to stink. That’s timeless comedy and requires no explanation.
So case closed, right? “April Fools’ Day began in France when the calendar changed.” Probably not (April Fools!), because the first written reference to the day dates back some two decades earlier, to 1561. Flemish writer Eduard De Dene’s Refereyn vp verzendekens dach / Twelck den eersten April te zyne plach is a comical poem about a nobleman sending his gullible servant on a series of ridiculous fake errands on April 1. Along with a message that remains timely today (“You’re a fool to believe what someone says on April 1”), the poem makes it clear that the seasonal pranks were already a widespread, well-known phenomenon decades before the calendar changed in France. Unlike many holidays with changing customs and rites, April Fools’ seems to be celebrated in much the same way now as it was in the 1500s.
April Fools’ Day origin #2: The ancient Romans did it
Some historians have dug all the way back to Ancient Rome to uncover evidence of the first April fool. Back then, they called days of rejoicing “hilaria.” People had private hilaria, like their wedding days, or public ones, like the Hilaria Matris Deûm, celebrated on March 25 as part of a 10-day festival to honor Cybele, the mother of the gods. After several festival days devoted to fasting, castration, mourning, and scourging, the hilaria gave everyone the chance to enjoy some much needed fun, playing games and having orgies (I assume).
The biggest highlight of Hilaria Matris Deûm was masquerading. You could get away with imitating anyone you wanted on this day, including government officials. So maybe this was the original April Fools’ Day? The evidence seems a little shaky to me, to be honest. The time of year is roughly correct, but the connection to pranks and hoaxes seems tenuous—dressing up as someone to mock them is not the same as tricking them into eating a donut filled with mayo.
Ultimately, no one knows where or when April Fools’ Day originated, so I’m going to say it came from...oh, Denmark. From there, it spread to the rest of Europe, probably. By the late 1600s, it was so firmly established that newsletters had no reason to explain it to readers. For example, the April 2, 1698 edition of Dawks’s News-Letter contains an item that reads: “Yesterday being the first of April, several persons were sent to the Tower Ditch to see the Lions washed.”
April Fools’ Day goes from personal to public
Whether it’s sticking a paper fish on someone’s back or sending tourists to see the lion washings, the first few hundred years of April Fools’ Day pranks were personal. It wasn’t an official holiday, it was just a bunch of folks joshing their friends or strangers on the street. But as society shifted from individual experiences to more mediated ones, the nature of the pranks shifted too. Beginning in the early 1900s, newspapers started publishing fake stories on April 1. Then radio started doing it, telling listeners that wasps were about to attack them, or the world was going to end. In the 1950s, television got in the act; even the staid BBC pranked viewers with a fake story about the Swiss spaghetti harvest.
The April Fools’ prank’s current most popular form—fake announcements on the internet—is fitting for our culture. Traditionally pranks were at least enjoyable for the one doing the pranking, but modern April Fools’ isn’t fun for anyone. The audience knows it’s going to happen, so no one is tricked, and if you think technology companies are “pranking” people because their marketing departments are enjoying it, not because they want “engagement” and to further solidify their brand image, you really are a fool. The holiday is now fully corporate-approved. The only thing that was ever good about it was that it at least used to be a home-grown, unofficial holiday of the people. The jerky people, but still.
There aren’t really any studies on this, but strictly from a personal “I’ve been on the Internet for a long time” perspective, the popularity of online April Fools’ jokes have been declining for several years. Granted, they have always been annoying to a lot of people (which should be expected from a holiday tradition that has victims) but increasingly, they aren’t funny to anyone.
In the disinformation age, every day is April 1, and we’re all constantly being taken for fools. We’re constantly being bombarded by people using technology to try to fool us, whether it’s criminal robots sending text to steal the money in our bank accounts, influencers monetizing our envy through filters and careful camera angles, AI generated deep-fakes of the pope in a puffer jacket, or the more subtle, but all-encompassing hoaxes of modern politics and commerce—would that fake news only spread online on one day out of 365. In a way, April Fools’ Day is now the most honest day of the year, as at least the people pranking us are willing to admit it’s all fake.
Edited (March 30, 2023): April 1 falls on Saturday on 2023, not Friday as the post originally read.