Today is April Fool's Day! But who are the fools? We all know it's a day for making pranks and telling light lies that make us laugh at people, the so-called fools. But it's not those fools I'm talking about.
Who were the first fools who originated the event and how did that happen? Did you ever wonder what kind of lie or prank might have originated April Fool's Day? What sort of situation could have been controversial enough to generate this worlwide known day? Most theories turn around the calendar history.
In Mesopotamia at around 2000 B.C., the New Year was celebrated during the vernal equinox, which was around March 20-25th. There were only 10 months back then and the calendar was based on the harvest along with pagan rituals. This frame kept on during the Ancient Rome. The 304-day calendar year began in March (Martius), named after the Roman god Mars, and so were named the first four months of the initial calendar, based on gods like Juno (June); the last six were consecutively numbered in Latin, giving rise to month names such as September (the seventh month, named after the latin word for seven, septem). When the harvest ended, so did the calendar; the winter months were unnamed.
As time went by, the New Year day was celebrated on dates ranging from March 21 to April 1 following Julius Caesar's calendar. However, since the early medieval times, european scholars were quite aware of the calendar's flaws as to the accumulated erronious days. Numerous published researches had been calling for a calendar reform until the 16th century.
Most historians claim that the Julian calendar had its first fall in the 16th century and France was one of the first countries to take forward the change: Among times of great tension between Protestants and Catholics, with bursting civil and religious war, in 1564, king Charles IX proposed to make January 1st officially New Year's Day. The king's Edict of Roussillon was passed into law by the French Parliament on Dec. 22, 1564.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a papal bull which suggested a calendar reform, urging the Christian nations around Europe to take forward a new organization approaching previous researches over the centuries and the interests of the Catholic Church, which had in it included the New Year Day move to January 1st, and would be later called Gregorian Calendar, used until current days by most nations in the world. It happened that most European countries progressively undertook the papal bull and officialy changed their calendar.
The change wasn't accepted by some people who kept on celebrating New Year from around March 20 until April 1st. Although back then in France (and probably in every nation at the time) it was common that different regions celebrated New Year in different dates. Some had fetivities for New Year in December 25, some in March 25, some in March 1. Those who did it were mocked and called fools. As the zodiacal sign was the fish, the French placed dead fish on the backs of one another to laught at those who didn't follow the reform, and this might have been the first prank of April Fool's Day. But with so many dates, why April 1st? Pranks made out of lies became popular on that day. A common one was that those resistant to the change were invited to non-existent parties and celebrations on April 1st.
Another theory says the day of lies and pranks might have emerged in Great Britain. As the British government waited until the 18th century to adopt the "Catholic" calendar, British people kept on celebrating New Year's Day with festivities from March 25 to April 1 for two centuries longer than France. However, such customs were common there on 1 April long before the calendar reform.
There are several references writen by poets, which date from before 1564, about foolish errands on April 1st, but none of them unambiguously explains the customs' birth. On 1 April 1698, several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to "see the Lions washed", event which has never happened. Since then, it's common to find press lie all over in Fool's Day.
In Brazil, the tradition was introduced in 1828, with the printed news from Minas Gerais “A Mentira” (The Lie), which in its first edition brought the death of king Dom Pedro I on the cover and was published precisely on April 1st (Agência Brasil, 2022). Hence why in this country the 1st of April is literally called "The Day of the Lie".
We are not sure of what exactly was the first lie that originated the prank custom, but we do know it has been somehow asynchronously spread and repeated in Western nations over numerous centuries and each country found its own version for the 1 Aprils' history.
Sources
* https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/geral/noticia/2022-04/conheca-historia-de-1o-de-abril-dia-da-mentira
* https://educacao.uol.com.br/datas-comemorativas/0401---dia-da-mentira.htm
* https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-new-year-once-started-in-march-heres-why
* https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/WolfFiles/story?id=90735&page=1
* http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/calendar_reform
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