April Fools'

So this blog has been mostly about tweezers, but I thought that it would be funny to acknowledge April Fools’ Day. One of my friends received an e-mail saying that since it was her half birthday a store would give her half off of everything. She was all geared up to go and then when she got to the end of the e-mail it was a joke. At first she thought about boycotting the store because it got her so excited, but later realized that—after the fact—it was kind of funny. So where does April Fools’ Day come from?

The most common theory about the earliest April Fools’ celebrations goes like this: In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull decreeing a new standard calendar for Christian Europe that would take his name and centuries later become the standard internationally in the 21st century.

Prior to the 15th century, Europe’s nations and city states operated using the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar moved the date of the New Year from April 1 to January 1, among other changes. Catholic monarchies were naturally its earliest adopters, though Protestant nations later followed suit.

Given the nature of the reform, both in terms of communicating such a fundamental change to a large population and dealing with critics of the new calendar, some Europeans continued to celebrate the new year between March 25 and April 1. April fools were those who still celebrated the holiday in the spring, and were the subject of pranks and ridicule by those who observed the New Year months ago.

That’s just one theory for the origin of the holiday, however. There are other notes on the holiday’s traditions, other occasions resembling April Fools’ Day that preceded the more contemporary incarnation by centuries.

So how did you celebrate April Fools’ Day?