The Saturnalia depicted by Antoine-François CalletAncient Roots
Throughout antiquity numerous festivals included celebrations of foolery and
trickery. The Saturnalia, a Roman winter festival observed at the end of
December, was the most important of these. It involved dancing, drinking, and
general merrymaking. People exchanged gifts, slaves were allowed to pretend that
they ruled their masters, and a mock king, the Saturnalicius princeps (or Lord
of Misrule), reigned for the day. By the fourth century AD the Saturnalia had
transformed into a January 1 New Year's Day celebration, and many of its
traditions were incorporated into the observance of Christmas.
In late March the Romans honored the resurrection of Attis, son of the Great
Mother Cybele, with the Hilaria celebration. This involved rejoicing and the
donning of disguises.
Further afield in India there was Holi, known as the festival of color, during
which street celebrants threw tinted powders at each other, until everyone was
covered in garish colors from head to toe. This holiday was held on the
full-moon day of the Hindu month of Phalguna (usually the end of February or the
beginning of March).
Northern Europeans observed an ancient festival to honor Lud, a Celtic god of
humor. And there were also popular Northern European customs that made sport of
the hierarchy of the Druids.
All of these celebrations could have served as precedents for April Fool's Day.
Medieval Roots
During the middle ages, a number of celebrations developed which served as
direct predecessors to April Fool's Day. The most important of these was the
Festus Fatuorum (the Feast of Fools) which evolved out of the Saturnalia. On
this day (mostly observed in France) celebrants elected a mock pope and parodied
church rituals. The church, of course, did its best to discourage this holiday,
but it lingered on until the sixteenth century. Following the suppression of the
Feast of Fools, merrymakers focused their attention on Mardi Gras and Carnival.
A medieval fool dispenses treats to a crowdThere was also the medieval figure of
the Fool, the symbolic patron saint of the day. Fools became prominent in late
medieval Europe, practicing their craft in a variety of settings such as town
squares and royal courts. Their distinctive dress remains well known today:
multicolored robe, horned hat, and sceptre and bauble.
Mythological Roots
There have been quite a few attempts to provide mythological explanations for
the rise of April Fool's Day.
For instance, it was once popular to attempt to christianize the celebration by
locating its origin somewhere in Biblical traditions. In one such version, the
day's origin is attributed to Noah's mistake of sending a dove out from the ark
before the flood waters had subsided (thereby sending the dove on a fool's
errand). A second story tells that the day commemorates the time when Jesus was
sent from Pilate to Herod and back again. The phrase "Sending a man from Pilate
to Herod" (an old term for sending someone on a fool's errand) was often pointed
to as proof of this origin theory.
But there are rival mythological explanations linking the celebration to pagan
roots. For instance, April Fool's Day was often traced back to Roman mythology,
particularly the myth of Ceres and Proserpina. In Roman mythology Pluto, the God
of the Dead, abducted Proserpina and brought her to live with him in the
underworld. Proserpina called out to her mother Ceres (the Goddess of grain and
the harvest) for help, but Ceres, who could only hear the echo of her daughter's
voice, searched in vain for Proserpina. The fruitless search of Ceres for her
daughter (commemmorated during the Roman festival of Cerealia) was believed by
some to have been the mythological antecedent of the fool's errands popular on
April 1st.
A citizen of Gotham is shown trying to trap a bird inside a roofless fence in
this 1630 woodcutBritish folklore links April Fool's Day to the town of Gotham,
the legendary town of fools located in Nottinghamshire. According to the legend,
it was traditional in the 13th century for any road that the King placed his
foot upon to become public property. So when the citizens of Gotham heard that
King John planned to travel through their town, they refused him entry, not
wishing to lose their main road. When the King heard this, he sent soldiers to
the town. But when the soldiers arrived in Gotham, they found the town full of
lunatics engaged in foolish activities such as drowning fish or attempting to
cage birds in roofless fences. Their foolery was all an act, but the King fell
for the ruse and declared the town too foolish to warrant punishment. And ever
since then, April Fool's Day has supposedly commemmorated their trickery.
The Calendar-Change Theory
The most widespread theory about the origin of April Fool's Day involves the
Gregorian calendar reform of the late sixteenth century.
The theory goes like this: In 1582 France became the first country to switch
from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar established by the Council of Trent
(1563). This switch meant, among other things, that the beginning of the year
was moved from the end of March to January 1. Those who failed to keep up with
the change, who stubbornly clung to the old calendar system and continued to
celebrate the New Year during the week that fell between March 25th (known in
England as Lady Day) and April 1st, had various jokes played on them. For
instance, pranksters would surreptitiously stick paper fish to their backs. The
victims of this prank were given the epithet Poisson d'Avril, or April Fish.
Thus, April Fool's Day was born.
The calendar change hypothesis might provide a reason for why April 1st
specifically became the date of the modern holiday. But it is clear that the
idea of a springtime festival honoring misrule and mayhem had far more ancient
roots. In addition, the process by which the observance of the day spread from
France to protestant countries such as Germany, Scotland, and England is left
unexplained by this theory. These nations only adopted the calendar change
during the eighteenth century, at a time when the tradition of April Foolery had
already been well established throughout Europe. Finally, it is not cl
