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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.
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. There 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 scepter and bauble.
According to the legend, it was traditional in the 13th century for any road that the King traveled over to become public property. The citizens of Gotham, not wishing to lose their main road, spread a false story to stop King John from passing through their town. When the King learned of their deception, he sent a messenger to demand that they explain their actions. But when the messenger arrived in Gotham he found the town was full of lunatics who were engaged in foolish activities such as drowning fish or attempting to cage birds in roofless fences (though, of course, their foolery was all an act). 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 commemorated their trickery.
But there were rival mythologival 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, 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 (commemorated 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.
According to them, the celebration traces its roots back to festivals marking the Vernal Equinox, or Springtime. Spring is the time of year when the weather becomes fickle, as if Nature is playing tricks on man, and festivals occurring during the Spring (such as May Day) traditionally mirrored this sense of whimsy and surprise. They often involved temporary inversions of the social order. Rules were suspended. Normal behavior no longer governed during the brief moment of transition as the old world died and the new cycle of seasons was born. Raucous partying, trickery, and the turning upside down of status expectations were all allowed. Slaves ruled their masters. Children played tricks on their parents.
Anthropologists note that Spring celebrations of misrule and mayhem, such as April Fool's Day, which would appear at first glance to undermine social values of order and stability, paradoxically actually help to reaffirm these values. The celebrations act as a safety valve, giving people a chance to vent their social antagonisms in a harmless way. In addition, they give people a chance to temporarily step outside of accepted rules of behavior. People can then choose either to voluntarily return to a state of order, thereby reaffirming society's values, or to remain in a state of anarchy. Inevitably, they choose order.
These young fish were easy to fool with a hook and lure. Therefore, the French called them 'Poisson d'Avril' or 'April Fish.' Soon it became customary (according to this origin theory) to fool people on April 1, as a way of celebrating the abundance of foolish fish. The French still use the term 'Poisson d'Avril' to describe the unfortunate victims of April Fool's Day pranks. They also observe the custom of giving each other chocolate fish on April 1.
Although popular, this theory has a number of problems with it. 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. (In this illustration by William Hogarth, the leaflet lying on the ground reads, "Give us our eleven days.")
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. The origin of April Fool's Day remains clouded in obscurity. Basically no one knows exactly where, when, or why the celebration began.
What we do know is that references to 'All Fool's Day' (what April Fool's Day was first called) began to appear in Europe during the late Middle Ages. All Fool's Day was a folk celebration and elite participation in it appears to have been minimal (which is why it's so difficult to trace the exact origin of the day, because the people celebrating it back then weren't the kind of people who kept records of what they did). But what is clear is that the tradition of a day devoted to foolery had ancient roots. As we look back in time we find many ancient predecessors of April Fool's Day.
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