April Fools' Day
Next: April 1, 2027
Play a kind joke today.
The story
Where it comes from
April Fools' Day, also called All Fools' Day, has been kept for centuries, but no one owns it and its true origins are unknown. One popular theory points to France, where the Edict of Roussillon of 1564 moved the start of the year from Easter to 1 January, so that people who clung to the old new year became the fools. Others link the day to the changeable weather around the March equinox, or to Hilaria, a festival of ancient Rome held on 25 March.
How it's celebrated
Friends play harmless practical jokes, send each other on fools' errands or point out shoelaces that are not untied, and a good prank ends with the cry 'April Fool'. In France children pin a paper fish to a friend's back, and the person fooled is a poisson d'avril, an 'April fish'. Newspapers, broadcasters and companies join in with straight-faced made-up stories. The best jokes leave everyone laughing, the victim included.
Did you know
- On 1 April 1957 the BBC's current-affairs programme Panorama showed a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees, and hundreds of viewers called to ask how they could grow their own.
- In Scotland the day is called Gowkie Day, after the gowk, or cuckoo, and on the day after, Tailie Day, 'kick me' signs appear on people's backs.
- In 1977 The Guardian printed a travel supplement on San Serriffe, an island republic shaped like a semicolon and named after a style of typeface.
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