April Fools 2018: Why do we mark April Fools? Where is it from?
APRIL Fools’ Day is an annual celebration dedicated to pulling pranks, jokes and deceiving each other but why have we come to associate the first day of April as a day to play practical jokes on one another?
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There is no consensus or certainty over where April Fools’ Day originated from, leaving the day shrouded in mystery.
Some believe the day dates as far back as the Roman times, and the Roman festival of “Hilaria”, which was celebrated on March 25.
The date of the festival coincided with the spring equinox, and Romans were invited to play pranks on one another.
However, there is some evidence it originated from the time of Pope Gregory XIII, who adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582 and moved New Year’s Day from March to January.
This led to a theory that April Fools’ Day started as a reaction to calendar shift as people would ignore the new calendar and still celebrated the New Year on April 1.
These people were ridiculed and poked fun at for still celebrating the new year on the old date and were labelled the “April Fools” - hence the name April Fools’ Day.
The French would stick paper fish to the backs of the ‘April Fools’ and called them Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish - which is still a term used in France for April Fools'.
However April Fools’ was already mentioned in parts of Europe before the new calendar was introduced, casting doubt on this theory.
In Britain, the switch to the Gregorian calendar was not made until two centuries later in 1752.
There are references to April Fools’ as far back as the 14th century and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1392 work “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”, the poet depicts a rooster named Chauntecleer who is fooled by a fox and in turn fools a fox.
This happens “Syn March bigan, thritty dayes and two” which seems to be a clear reference to the 32nd day after the beginning of March, or April 1 and was viewed as a reference to April Fools’.
However, scholars believe “began” is a scribal error and Chaucer actually meant 32 days after March ends, or May 2.
The first definite reference to April Fools’ Day comes from a 1561 Flemish poem by Eduard de Dene, who he wrote of a nobleman sending his servants on foolish errands on the day.
Others remark April Fools’ Day was an idea left over from the idea of “renewal festivals” marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring.
The festival reportedly involved pranks and deception and causing general chaos.
Whatever the reason for the prank-filled day, people have used it to plan mischievous jokes on each other around the world, some more elaborate than others.
In 1957 the BBC aired a Panorama documentary about spaghetti crops in Switzerland, and showed a Swiss farmed picking freshly grown spaghetti. The programme was called ‘Swiss Spaghetti Harvest’.
Burger King perpetrated a world-famous prank when they ran a full-page advert in USA today in 1998 plugging the ‘left-handed Whopper.’
The fast-food chain claimed they had designed a new sandwich by rotating the ingredients of the regular Whopper 180 degrees for left-handed diners. It was a prank and Burger King broke the news with the line: “Everyone knows that it takes two hands to hold a Whopper!”