Why do we celebrate April Fool's Day?

Truth is we really don't know where the tradition of playing pranks on people came from. There are a few theories floating around though.

When the western world used the Julian calendar, the year began on March 25th because they celebrated the start of a new year with the start of spring. However since that fell in the Holy Week, they celebrated it on the first of April. However, when we switched to the Gregorian calendar in the 1500s, we moved the New Year to the first of January. According to the most widely told story, those who still celebrated the New Year on April 1st were called April fools.

The Encyclopedia of Religion and the Encyclopedia Britannica thinks that the timing of April Fool's Day is directly related to the arrival of Spring, when nature 'fools' humans with erratic weather.

The Country Diary of Garden Lore has a theory that April Fools Day commemorates "the fruitless mission of the rook (the European crow) who was sent out in search of land from Noah's flood-surrounded ark."

In France, April Fools day is called "Poisson d'Avril" meaning April Fish. The tradition is that French children will tape paper fish to the backs of their friends. When they would discover the fish on their back, the prankster would yell "Poisson d'Avril!" The origin of this is unknown.

In Scotland, the April fool is called April "gowk" which is Scottish for cuckoo. The Cuckoo is an emblem of simpletons.

In Canada, Chez FM fooled the listeners one April Fools Day making listeners believe that it was the last day that the treasury would honor all the two-dollar bills still in circulation. The same year they had people going through their change looking for the mysterious two-dollar coins that had mistakenly been minted from real gold.

One newscaster on the news show CBO Morning announced that the clock in Ottawa's Peace Tower was being switched to digital.

On 1 April 1957 on BBC's show Panorama opened with a line about Spring coming early this year, prompting the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland to be early as well. In the normal news manner, spaghetti's oddly uniform length was explained as the result of years of dedicated cultivation. The report stated that the ravenous spaghetti weevil had been conquered.

So, on April 1st are you going to be the tricked or the trickster?

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