THE ORIGIN OF APRIL FOOL’S DAY

Since April is widely regarded as the month of funny, and numerous loving rivalries come to a head, we hardly ever think of when or why April Fool’s day exists or when this day was first celebrated.

April Fool’s day is also known as All Fools Day. It is celebrated worldwide. In some countries it is even a public holiday. April Fool’s day has been popular since the Nineteenth century, but very early origin has been detected, some even as far back as 1508, where the origins is from a French poet named Eloy d’Amerval, as he referred to a poisson d’avril (April fool, literally “Fish of April”), possibly the first reference to the celebration in France.

Another notable early origin comes from British background, where a man named John Aubrey referred to this day as “Fool’s holy day”. On April first of 1698 several people where tricked into going to the Tower of London to see “the lions get washed”. Of course no lions were kept in the Tower of London or near it.

Also read -> Steam locomotives scheduled to return to Heidelberg

Some notable magazines April Fool jokes were that of the Associated Press in 1983. Joseph Boskin, a professor of History at the Boston University claimed that he traced the origins of April Fool’s day to Constantine’s period. He said that on this day the court jesters claimed that they could run the empire better that the emperor himself. The amused emperor then elected a jester to be king for a day. The Jester King then passed an edict that called for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual occurrence. The Associated Press brought this alternate version to print in their newspaper, not knowing that Boskin had invented the entire story as an April Fool’s joke itself. The newspaper was only informed of this weeks later.

April Fool’s day has always been a very controversial day, as many claim the day has a pagan background, and that it is an unnecessary day of foolishness. Luckily for those of us with a larger sense of humor, the day is celebrated with a prank, a joke, hoaxes and lots of belly laughs.

During our research of the April Fool’s origins, we also tried to find some local pranks and hoaxes played by our fellow inhabitants of Heidelberg and Nigel, but alas none was to be found.

We know that many of you are jokesters at heart and love to be the jester, so why not let us know, if you were King for a Day, what hoax or prank would become law? Or better yet, show us!

Follow us on: