April Fool’s Day
Have you ever woken up an
hour early because your roommate has set your alarm clock back while you were
sleeping? Usually, you would give that roommate
a severe beating and make them cry for their mamma, but if they did this on
April 1st, then you’re just going to have to accept the truth: You’re
an April Fool.
April Fool’s Day is one of
the most fun days of the year. It is
the only day where we have carte blanche in humiliating our friends and family.
This constant game of one-upmanship brings
out the best of us and it’s always refreshing to celebrate a holiday that is
all about jokes, pranks, and general tomfoolery. It is a day that we all act a fool, as long as the practical
jokes that we play do not actually cause another person some physical, mental,
emotional, existential, or spiritual pain.
The origins of April Fool’s
Day has still yet to be fully determined.
However, it has been determined that April Fool’s Day evolved from a
reform of the calendar. You see, prior
to 1582, most European celebrated their new year on March 25, the day of the
Feast of Annunciation. This new year’s
day celebration would last for eight days culminating on April Fool’s Day, which
is a tradition that I seriously think we need to get back to. Eight days of New Year’s celebrations? Amazing!
However, it was that fateful
year that Pope Gregory XIII left a major mark on the world and inadvertently
created the fun little holiday known as April Fools Day! He determined that a new calendar, the
Gregorian Calendar, should immediately replace the old calendar, the Julian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar proclaimed that New
Year’s Day should be celebrated on January 1.
However, most countries held out because who is really going to tell
them to change their calendars, because that’s a pretty damn inconvenient thing
you would have to do if you were a government.
Pope Gregory XIII, the
Father of April Fool’s Day, did find immediate support from Charles IX, the
French leader who immediately adopted the Gregorian Calendar. However, as this was the time before SUVs
and Hummer’s, news traveled slowly throughout France and many were unaware of
this change in when a year starts. Many
unknowingly celebrated the beginning of a new year on a different day for
several years thus ruining their ability to remember the actual ages of their
counterparts. Others simply refused to
acknowledge this change of the new year, as you have to admit, it’s pretty
ambitious for a political leader to change the beginning of a year.
However, considering that this was late 16th century France, as you
could imagine, the reaction to these individuals that refused to acknowledge
the change in the New Year date was tough, but fair. Labeled as fools and objects of ridicules, the people that
continued to acknowledge the New Year on April were the subjects of practical
jokes. Through the time honored
tradition of public humiliation, people eventually came to accept that the New
Year started on January 1 and if you still believed that it began on April 1,
then you were an April Fool. Thus
concludes the thrilling story of both April Fool’s Day and modern New Year’s
Day! Happy April’s Fool’s Day!
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