Hey, April Foolers.
I’m sure you all expected us to have a bunch of office pranks to post about for today, but I thought it might be more conducive to learning if I gave a light overview concerning the history of this auspicious day. So let’s take a journey back in time to discover the origin of this intriguing holiday and the reasons behind its strange celebrations.
To understand this holiday we must travel back all the way to the early medieval times, when dragons still weren’t real but very much so believed in. Originally a Christian Feast Day, April Fools’ or the Feast of Fools was not so widespread back then.
In fact its celebration was confined to the limits of the small English town of Chumpsterburg. This town’s April 1st celebrations can be traced all the way back to the year 200, when the townsfolk received their first king ever, King Jacob of Prankston, France.
During a time of such extremes in social status, worlds collided: the rich and the poor, the royalty and the commoners, the educated and the superstitious. Upon King Jacob’s arrival, the first day of April was declared April Fools’ Day, often referred to in ancient texts as Festivus Follis or Follis Diem.
The shenanigans that the upper class would pull over on the commoners were typically harmless, innocent jokes that never amounted to more than a laugh. Never—until one year in the sixth century, that is, in which a group of soldiers on night watch went door-to-door the morning of April 1st, telling the townspeople that a dragon had been spotted.
This sparked mass panic and lead to the unexpected evacuation of the townsfolk. Thus the celebration of April Fools’ Day was spread across the land. Meanwhile, in Chumpsterburg, the holiday was banned and replaced as March 32nd instead until the villages’ prompt collapse.
Click here to read more information about this interesting holiday and Happy April Fools’ Day!
- John