The Meaning of April Fool's Day.

Everyone knows that the first day in April is a day for playing pranks on your friends. Prank phone calls, whoopie cushions, boisterous tales, you name it. What most people do not know, is where the tradition of playing pranks on April fool's Day came from. Most people that are knowledgeable on the subject tend to agree that nobody quite knows for sure, but there are a few very nice theories out there.

--The Old Switcheroo.

    Many ancient cultures, like the Romans, celebrated the arrival of the new year on April 1st. This was done because April 1 roughly lines up with the vernal equinox(which happens a few days beforehand). In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar to be created to replace the existing one. This new calendar changed the official date of the new year from April 1st to January 1st.

    As the story goes, information did not travel very fast those days, and so many people did not hear about this change for a long time. A number of other people heard about the change, but flat out refused to celebrate new years on January 1st. These people who refused to celebrate or did not know of the new date eventually became known as "fools", and people would send them fake gifts or ridiculous errands to go about on. this practice slowly spread throughout Europe, and still remains today. This idea is of course only a conjecture, and one that was made very recently, at that.

-- Constantine

      Another popular idea is that during the reign of Constantine, a group of jesters told him that they could do a much better job of running the Roman Empire. Constantine is said to have elected one of the jesters named Kugel to be emperor for a day, for the sake of amusement. Kugel then declared that during that day, the Roman Empire was to indulge in insanity and crazyness and everything was to be completely absurd. This then became a tradition each year, and it happened to occur on April 1st, which is why we celebrate April Fool's Day on this date.

There are a few other theories as to the true beginnings of this day, but none quite as prominent as these two. Either way, this tradition that we have now is certainly a fun one, and I hope everyone has had an excellent time pranking your friends!