The 'Real' History of April Fools' Day (and Why It Isn’t Funny Anymore)

Today is April 1, April Fools’ Day, the annual holiday that celebrates pranking, hoaxes, and all manner of horseplay 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, and April Fools' Day has been around for a surprisingly long time. As far back as 1708, the British newspaper Apollo asked, “Whence proceeds the custom of making April Fools?” and provided unconvincing answers. So we know the April Fools' tradition goes back centuries, but the exact origins of the holiday are still a mystery. There are theories, but they all reek faintly of bullshit.

April Fools’ Day origin story #1: The great French calendar switch of 1582

The most popular (but still probably bullshit) April Fools' origin story blames France. It goes like this: Back in 1563, The Council of Trent declared that Christ is entirely present in both the consecrated bread and wine in the Eucharist. But more importantly, it decreed 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 the 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 the new year on April 1.

To get everyone back in line, people started mocking calendar-truthers by playing tricks on them. Because the first day of April used to coincide with the end of Lent, and fish was a popular Lenten gift, giving a fool a fake fish was seen as a hilarious joke (or so the story goes). This evolved into the 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.” Nah. 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. 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 mayonnaise.

Since 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.

No matter the origin, by the late 1600s, April Fools' Day was so firmly established that newsletters saw 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.” (Sending fools to see lions washed is hilarious.)

April Fools’ Day goes from personal to public

Whether it’s sticking a paper fish on someone’s back or sending tourists to the lion washings, the first few 100 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 April 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 the state of 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 really tricked, and the technology and media companies that are “pranking” people are doing it because they want clicks and engagement to further solidify their brand image. That's the opposite of fun. The only thing that was ever good about April Fools' Day is that it was a home-grown, unofficial folk holiday of the people. The jerky people, but still. Now April Fools' Day is entirely corporation-approved.

Why April Fools' Day needs to die

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 and hopefully it drops off to nothing soon. No one needs a holiday that has victims.

In the disinformation age, every day is April 1 anyway; we’re constantly being taken for fools. We’re bombarded by people using technology to try to trick us, whether it’s criminal robots sending texts 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 as a whole. Hearing some jerkass saying "Ha ha, tricked you," just isn't funny anymore—if it ever was.

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