Many of the ancient cultures such as Romans and
Hindus and the medieval Europeans used to celebrate New Year's Day on
sometime near the vernal equinox that could range from March 20th to
April 5th. In the Julian calendar, April 1st was designated as the New
Year's Day and was so celebrated till 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII
ordered the adoption of the new Gregorian Calendar, which specified
January 1st as the New Year's Day. However, due to slow communications
and resistance of people to change their traditions, many people
continued to celebrate New Year's Day as before on 1st of April.
Scottish only adopted the new calendar in 1660, Germans, Danish and
Norwegians in 1700 and English in 1752.
Many French resisted the change and neoiites dubbed them as fools and
played pranks on them. They started sending them on 'fool's errands',
sent them the fake invitations for parties and tricked them into
believing something false. The victims were called 'Poisson d'Avril' or
'April Fish' as the naïve fish gets caught easily and children
would often tag of a fish's picture on someone's back. Thus, April
Fool's Day originated and was popularly celebrated in England and in the
American colonies. It evolved and was caught on quickly throughout the
world to trick each other and have fun. Even today, people play pranks
on each other on this day in the memory of those tradition-obsessed
'fools'.
Perhaps the best illustration of the April Fool's Pranks of the 19th
century is the Thomas Nast's illustration, originally published in the
April 2, 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly. It highlights the various pranks
that were popularly played at the time with its caption as 'All Fool's
Day'. Some of the pranks shown here include women visiting an older man
wearing beards and moustaches, Civil War Soldiers tricking each other
such as a soldier barring the view by holding his hand on in front of
the binoculars of a friend and a sailor doing the same by holding his
hat over the telescope of a friend. The other tricks include a young boy
tying a string on the dress of a little girl while a schoolteacher is
shown with the sign of 'Old Fool' on his back.
