Where did this faux holiday come from?
Why do we do this to each other, and when will we finally juststop?
These are surprisingly tricky questions, and April Fools' Day has been around for a surprisingly long time.
As far back as 1708, the Britishnewspaper Apollo asked, Whence proceeds the custom of making April Fools?
and provided unconvincing answers.
There are theories, but they all reek faintly of bullshit.
But more importantly, it decreed Catholic nations should use the Gregorian calendar instead of the Julian calendar.
(French people can be stubborn.)
To get everyone back in line, people started mocking calendar-truthers by playing tricks on them.
Thatstimelesscomedy and requires no explanation.
So case closed, right?
April Fools Day began in France when the calendar changed.
Probably not (April Fools!
), because the first written reference to the day dates back some two decades earlier, to 1561.
Back then, they called days of rejoicing hilaria.
The biggest highlight of Hilaria Matris Deum 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.
(Sending fools to see lions washed is hilarious.)
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.
The April Fools pranks current most popular formfake announcements on the internetis fitting for the state of our culture.
That’s the opposite of fun.
The jerky people, but still.
Now April Fools' Day is entirely corporation-approved.
