Why in heaven‘s name do we celebrate the first of April and call it April Fools’ Day? Are we so short of holidays that we created one? (At least commercialism hasn’t really jumped on this one with lots of cards or candy, yet.) I decided to look it up. 

Under Julius Caesar, in 46 BCE, an official calendar was chosen. It would be used throughout Europe until 1582. Remarkably, this calendar calculated the solar year to within 11 minutes of what it has turned out to be. It added a leap year every four years in February. It began the year on January 1. 

In “What have the Romans Done for Us?,” a perennially funny skit from Monty Python, Python cast members list the gifts from the Roman Empire. It is prodigious. Those pesky 11 minutes, though, kept adding up through the centuries, leading to a shift between the first day of spring on the calendar and the equinox: March 21 to 22. The calendar had, over the centuries, gained 11 days.

Under Pope Gregory, mathematicians (presumably) and others were able to reduce the 11 minutes per year to just 26 seconds by manipulating the leap year a bit more. It’s complicated but elegant. Pope Gregory got what he wanted. Easter was clawed back toward the equinox, although it still wanders as a holiday. Also, the medieval ‘change’ to the Julian calendar that moved the first of the year to the equinox was reversed. Fun fact: by the year 4909 our Gregorian-based calendars will be a full day ahead of the solar year. Another fun fact: most of our holidays are ancient in origin.

Once the Pope promulgated the new calendar, France adopted it in 1582. Catholic Europe followed. Protestant Germany did not adopt it until 1700, and England (and thus also the American colonies) waited until late 1752 to adopt it! The Protestants feared the calendar change was a papal plot to overthrow their governments. But I think the real reason for the English delay is the English’s pique with the French, which has lasted these 500 years, or by some accounts 1,000 years. 

I can’t understand how the warring nations of Europe dealt with two distinct calendars for nearly 200 years. Perhaps that’s what made them so irritable and greedy. (“You promised you’d be here on the 6th…” “That’s it, I’m taking Bermuda!”)

Benjamin Franklin supposedly said “it was pleasant to go to sleep on September 2 and wake up on September 14”.

So, I’ve lost the plot. Why is it called April Fools’ Day? April’s fools supposedly was the derogatory name given to those who clung to the old calendar and its spring start. Poor April got caught in the middle of yet another human squabble. It also was moved from being the second month in the Julian calendar to fourth in the Gregorian calendar. And the beautiful name April comes from Latin and perhaps the earlier Etruscan languages. It means “to open”, or may even hold some connection to the Etruscan Aphru, the goddess of love, beauty and fertility.

However, and this is one I plump for, the Romans had a festival called Hilaria. It, too, marked the beginning of spring near the end of March and it involved playing pranks, dressing up, and all manners of hilarity. So why isn’t it called Hilarity Day or Comedy Day? I don’t know. 

I do know I witnessed two pranks this past April first. One was a phone call from a business to a client, telling them not to come in because the clinic had burned down. Another was from the same clinic to another client, saying their appointment was canceled. Luckily, I can say that this clinic is not in Vermont.

I hope we are funnier than this. Perhaps this is a holiday, name day that can be replaced with something else.