Re-do

It is a cross cultural celebratory day that spans the globe. April Fools’ Day, or All Fools’ Day, provides a designated day of the year in which to prank or be the recipient of a prank or hoax. A light-hearted day for those who enjoy pulling an April Fool joke. April 1 became the designated day most likely due to the calendar re-do in the sixteenth century, some cultures have celebrated a version of April Fools’ Day in the spring for centuries before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.

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Mid-March to April 1 has been celebrated by pranks, puns and pro-foolish behavior probably since the Roman Festival of Hilaria, which was on March 25. This celebrated the resurrection of the Roman god Atticus. The Hindus have had for years the Holi Festival, another day celebrating the rite of spring. Perhaps spring, a season of new growth, is tied to the pranks and revelry as part of human nature. Everybody likes a good joke, provided that it is not at their expense. April Fools’ Day is like having “The Onion” concentrated into one day of the year. We humans have a tendency to view ourselves and life too seriously, and this one day allows for an expression of foolish behavior, or at least an excuse for such behavior.

Julius Caesar

April 1 became the date of celebrating foolish activity when the change from the Julian Calendar, declared by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, to the Gregorian Calendar was promulgated in 1582 AD. The Julian Calendar called for a leap year every four years, but that puts the calendar off the solar year by about 11 minutes a year. Not much for one year, but in 130 years the calendar is a full day off. Pope Gregory XIII sought to fix the calendar to make it more consistent with the earth’s rotation around the sun. What Pope Gregory promulgated was a calendar devised by Aloysius Lilius, an Italian physician and astronomer, which uses a leap year in every four years except if it is evenly divisible by 100, than it is not a leap year; the 29th day to February is added, however, when the year is evenly divisible by 400. The calendar is still not perfect, however, as it will be off a full day by 4909. Being off a day in 3,327 years is better than off by a day in 130 years. What the Pope had seen was that Easter was being pushed later and later beyond the first full moon after the spring equinox. Hence, it was no longer related to the moon cycle to which it was tied. Many countries that were primarily Catholic quickly decided to use the calendar for civil affairs. This would include Spain, France, Portugal and Italy. Protestant countries, forever fearful of a papal prank, put off adoption of the calendar. Since the Gregorian Calendar is now the common standard for much of the world, the Protestant fears were highly misplaced.

Holi Festival in India

What apparently occurred in France in 1582 is that persons who did not catch on the change in calendar, and that the day was now April 1, had tricks and pranks played on them by those who were more aware. As I study genealogy it becomes apparent that persons even into the 18th century were not as concerned with age and time as we modern folk. To them subsistence was more important than trying to remember their birth date. Luckily, they did not have a social security number with which to remember. The English did not change to the Gregorian Calendar until 1752, and Greece until 1923. Which begs the question, how did April Fools’ Day start in England before the institution of the Gregorian Calendar? Some see this as that fact that the calendar is not the explanation. However, the calendar change may well be the explanation. Those that discount the re-do of the calendar disregard is cultural transfer. Since even though they did not use the calendar, the cultural transfer of a day of pranks and hoaxes may well have made its way to English shore from France in the intervening years. The world is full of the effects of cultural transfer. Just as early Christianity played off pagan feasts, so too is do non-Christians today celebrate some Christian feast days, such as Christmas or Easter, albeit with the secular overtones of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Pope Gregory XIII

In 1984 a professor at Boston University noted his research found that April Fools’ Day actually came about during the reign of Emperor Constantine when the court jester, often the wise man in the room, was allowed to rule the sovereignty for a day. Media outlets liked this explanation. It was only later they found out that the explanation was a grand April Fools’ joke from the professor. Anthony Beevor in his book The Fall of Berlin which takes place in the spring of 1945, says the best April Fools day joke ever played was by Josef Stalin on the gullible Western Allies. He notes that Stalin always saw Berlin as the prize, although Eisenhower  he says never saw it as having strategic importance. Eisenhower did say that , but did he beleive it? Roosevelt was too frail to care. The British recognized and wanted to take Berlin, but minimized themselves by glory actions of Field Marshal Montgomery. Anyway, Stalin, in late March made the Western Allies believe that he too saw no strategic importance in Berlin and was moving forces south to take other areas. Of course, Stalin had no intention of doing this and clearly lied to the West to gain full and complete control of Berlin himself. If Berlin had no strategic importance to the Western Allies why did the Western Allies incessantly bombing Berlin? The reason is that the three powers had cut a secret deal on who would control what sections of Germany. Nonetheless, deceit can be turned into an April Fools’prank, just as a small prank to nag one’s sister, brother, friend or spouse.