Where does April Fool’s Day come from?

It’s that time of year when we’re ready with pranks and hoaxes galore – it’s April Fool’s Day. Individuals and institutions alike work to pull your leg – today, be extra sceptical of anything you read or hear. Although the holiday is widely recognised across the world, understanding exactly how it started is a little trickier. Historians aren’t really sure where April Fool’s Day came from or how it became such an international phenomenon, but here’s a look at some of the potential explanations, and some of the best examples of an April Fool prank.

One answer is poetry, and the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. In the 1300s, Chaucer told a story of a fox who played a prank on a rooster, who is almost eaten because of it. Some argue that this is the first documented reference to pranks taking place on the first of April, but the poet doesn’t ever actually use that date in the poem. He does, however, specify that the events take place 32 days “syn March began” – this would be 1 April. If you’re not a fan of this theory, you’re not alone, and critics suggest that Chaucer was simply using confusing words to make fun of people. Recent evidence also indicates it might have been a copying error.

Pranksters would stick paper fish on their back, and these people were therefore called Poisson d’Avril

Some reform of the calendar might be the answer, in a lot of different ways. Back in Roman times, there was a celebration called a renewal festival, which marked the start of a new year or season. This was marked by a day in which everything went a little topsy-turvy – servants could control their masters, or children bossed about their parents. The start of the new year was believed to come at the beginning of Spring and with the blooming of new flowers, and some think that the joker tradition emerged here. Traditionally, you weren’t supposed to play any pranks after midday, a potential explanation of the time bounding.

There was trouble, however, because many countries in Europe began the year on different dates. Since the fourteenth century, France used Easter as the start of the New Year, primarily for legal and administrative purposes. In 1564, the country reformed its calendar, moving the start of the year from the end of March to 1 January. According to stories, those who failed to keep up with the change or who clung to the old dates had pranks played on them. Pranksters would stick paper fish on their back, and these people were therefore called Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish. To this day, the term is used in France for April Fool’s.

In 1957, the BBC’s Panorama broadcast footage of a spaghetti tree

It is a hard thing to define, and scholars are particularly interested because neither Shakespeare nor Dickens – two men with a certain fondness for fools – ever mention the celebration. Although it had definitely spread through Europe by the eighteenth century, there’s little actual evidence as to where it began.

So, now we’ve failed to answer the question, let’s take a different tangent – what are some of the best April Fool’s jokes? In 1957, the BBC’s Panorama broadcast footage of a spaghetti tree, claiming that the pasta was actually grown on trees and harvested by the Swiss. Public reaction was not particularly positive, but BBC staff were pleased at having elevated the tradition. But they were not the first media organisation to attempt such a hoax – in 1835, The New York Sun ran a headline claiming life had been discovered on the Moon. Burger King hit the headlines in 1998 for supposedly pioneering a Left-Handed Whopper and, in 1962, a Sweden technician told his countrymen that covering a black-and-white TV with a nylon stocking would convert it to colour.

You may not come up with anything this elaborate for your own April Fool, but make sure to keep up the tradition. We may not know exactly where it came from but, for guaranteeing a few laughs every year, it can’t be beaten.