Why is it April Fools Day?

[kydavis_md]

Why do we have it, and who decided it should be APRIL fools day. Why not March Fools Day?

[Booker57]

Soon, some one smarter will come along, but for now. It has something to do with the change of calenders Julain to Gregoian.
The new year starting in January, those who did not change but still started the year in the Spring were the “April Fools”
I could be wrong

[_your_name_here]

ok, i know this one.

back in the 1500’s or something, the pope changed the julian calander to the gregorian calender. since news didn’t travel fast bach then, some people continued to celebrate on the julian calender’s new year, which is our april 1.

since these people didn’t change their schedule, others tried to play other tricks on them by making them believe other things that weren’t true.

i think this mostly originated in france.

the kids would, and still do, stick fish (paper, of course) on eachothers backs, for some reason. kind of like out “kick me” signs, i suppose.

[Smeghead]

I think Cecil once covered it, but I’m too lazy to search.

[Milton_De_La_Warre]

From my “Forgotten English” page-a-day calendar:

“April Day”
"In Scotland, upon April Day, they have a custom of hunting the gowk… properly a cuckoo, and is used here, metaphorically in vulgar language, for a fool. This is done by sending silly people upon fools’ errands from place to place, by means of a letter in which is written: ‘On the first day of April, Hunt the gowk another mile.’ " —John Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1813

[APB]

I would be very sceptical about the calendar change theory. The Snopes article on the subject ranks it only as ‘undetermined’.

http://www.snopes2.com/

What makes that theory so suspect is that what the introduction of the Gregorian calendar did was to shift the start of the year from 25 March, not 1 April. (The Snopes article is aware of this problem but, uncharacteristically, gets confused over its significance. To say that the New Year was celebrated on 1 April instead ‘because March 25 fell during Holy Week’ is incorrect for most years and 1 April was just as likely to do so. If the point is that 25 March usually fell within Lent, the same was also true for 1 April.) I would suggest that this theory is itself an April Fools joke.

[UDS]

I’ve always understood that the new year was celebrated on 25 March because the event from which we date our years is the (supposed) date of the Incarnation, and the Incarnation is celebrated on 25 March.

I don’t think there’s any connection between this and the celebration of fools on April Fools’ day. I’ve always believed - but I have no cite - that the celebration goes back to medieval times which, if true, also rules out any connection with the Gregorian calendar reform.

[Johanna]

The traditional first day of Spring predates the Incarnation. It was tied to the Vernal Equinox in ancient Rome (and still is in modern Iran and Afghanistan). Because of precession, the equinox was March 25 several centuries ago instead of March 21 like it is now. Nobody knows when Christ was really born, so Christmas was pegged to another pagan solar feast of the Winter Solstice, automatically putting the Incarnation at the Vernal Equinox.

The name of April (<Latin Aprilis) is derived from Etruscan apru, probably connected with Aphrodite, Goddess of Love. But the Latin speakers, not knowing Etruscan, seem to have made a folk etymology, confusing the name with the verb aperire ‘to open’, and so modified the name of the month to resemble this Latin word, to suggest ‘opening’, the opening of the New Year in the spring.

The opening of the season of Spring is associated with new beginnings. The first Tarot card is the Fool, associated with the first Hebrew letter, aleph. The Fool is Tarot Trump #0. This is the reason why the comedian Zero Mostel used the name as a professional Foole (cf. George Carlin, Occupation: Foole).

The Fool is an ancient archetype suggesting, among other things, perfect innocence, therefore the quality of being newborn or beginning afresh, corresponding to beginning of springtime. The Tarot Trump of the Fool is considered the spirit of springtime.

[panamajack]

The calendar change date really does seem to have almost no basis in fact (though, perhaps, it is possible that something like this occurred in a very isolated incident and somehow spread to widespread popularity). The Catholic Encylopedia article on New Year’s Day provides some background, and points out that (as would be expected) not all Christian nations used the same date :

They were not opposed to 1 January as the beginning of the year, but rather to the pagan extravagances which accompanied it. Evidently the natural opening of the year, the springtime, together with the Jewish opening of the sacred year, Nisan, suggested the propriety of putting the beginning in that beautiful season. Also, the Dionysian method (so named from the Abbot Dionysius, sixth century) of dating events from the coming of Christ became an important factor in New Year calculations. The Annunciation, with which Dionysius began the Christian era, was fixed on 25 March, and became New Year’s Day for England, in early times and from the thirteenth century to 1 Jan., 1752, when the present custom was introduced there. Some countries (e. g., Germany) began with Christmas, thus being almost in harmony with the ancient Germans, who made the winter solstice their starting-point. Notwithstanding the movable character of Easter, France and the Low Countries took it as the first day of the year, while Russia, up to the eighteenth century, made September the first month. The western nations, however, since the sixteenth, or, at the latest, the eighteenth century, have adopted and retained the first of January.

Even though certain dates may have been chosen as the ‘official’ New Year’s Day, there were many people who did celebrate the Julian January 1 as ‘New Year’s Day’. Consider that in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, New Year’s Day is celebrated on January 1, even though England had designated March 25 a century earlier.