If you see a video of a penguin flying in the air, better check the calendar it could be April 1st. 1st April is celebrated as April Fool’s Day all over the world (also known as All Fool’s day).  April Fools' Day is celebrated all around the world as a day filled with jokes and general silliness. Family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and even teachers may try to tickle your funny bone with a practical joke or a hoax of some kind.

 It has become tradition on the first of April to pull jokes of the harmless variety on those near and dear to us. We plot and we scheme and wait to apply it on a person so as to fool him/her. This can happen to anyone and by anybody this resists us to trust anyone on that day.  So beware of trusting anyone on that day. On this day people are full of fun mood. Even the oldest person and the strictest person shows his real face.

So how did this tradition of craziness begin? In truth, it remains a mystery, although there are many theories about how April Fools' Day got started. April Fools’ Day began in the 1500s when the Gregorian calendar took over from the Julian. Those who forgot the change and attempted to celebrate New Year’s (previously celebrated on the 1st of April) on the wrong date were teased as “April fools.”

But that’s only one theory. Others are:

• The timing of this day of pranks seems to be related to the arrival of spring, when nature “fools” mankind with fickle weather, according to the Encyclopedia of Religion and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

• The Country Diary of Garden Lore, which chronicles the goings-on in an English garden, says that April Fools’ Day “is thought to commemorate the fruitless mission of the rook (the European crow), who was sent out in search of land from Noah’s flood-encircled ark.”

 

• Others theorize it may have something to do with the Vernal Equinox.

 

• Some think to tie in with the Romans’ end-of-winter celebration, Hilaria, and the end of the Celtic New Year festival.

In Scotland, an April fool is called an April “gowk” — Scottish for cuckoo, an emblem of simpletons. In England, a fool is called a gob, gawby or gobby. In France, the victim of a hoax is called a “poisson d’avril,” an April fish. (“April fish” refers to a young fish, thus one easily caught.) The French delight in shouting “Poisson d’Avril!” at the denouement of the foolery.

All over the world April fool’s day is celebrated with the great joy and craziness.

 

By,

Charvi Pithava

     Student

Young Reporter's Club