There are of course a few widely held theories about the start of April Fool's day, but none of them can definitively claim to be the true beginning of the cultural phenomenon. Even the most widely held theory has several holes in it's explanation. At the very least, people in Europe have been celebrating April 1st as All Fools Day for over 500 years.
In 1582 France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. This meant that instead of New Years being celebrated at the end of March, it was now being celebrated on January first. Therefore, many people were going to look like fools on April 1st when they realized it isn't the New Year. We know that this happened and many people were made to be fools during this time. It sounds like the perfect explanation and it's widely held as the most reasonable explanation for the start of the trickery.
The problem is that there has been many links of April Fools Day all the way back to ancient Rome! At the end of March there was a festival called Hilaria. In ancient Rome people would dress up in disguises and play tricks on one another. Still a third option is the speculation that April fools' Day is related to the Vernal Equinox. The first day of spring in the northern hemisphere is known as when Mother Nature fooled people with her quickly changing and unpredictable weather.
What is for certain is that April Fools' Day spread quickly throughout all of Europe in the 18th century and since then it has only grown in popularity. In modern times many public companies have taken to fooling their customers with mass hoaxes. Media companies print fake stories, Taco Bell announced it was buying the Liberty Bell and renaming it to the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1957 BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop. They even had video of trees full of spaghetti getting harvested!
Perhaps what has made it so hard to find the root of the celebration is that there really isn't one. Many historians have given up and have explained that April Fools' Day has been around since before written history as just the natural progression of the human mind dealing with the changing weather in our world around spring time. It's understandable in a way since it's only celebrated in the areas of the world where Spring begins in March, ie the Northern hemisphere.
I'm just glad I have a good reason to have my wife stop at the auto parts store to pickup some blinker fluid for me! Actually she'd never fall for that, I'd have to be much more creative. Be sure and carry on the tradition and make someone feel like a fool today! And don't worry if you are the fool, you're equally important to the celebration.
There words are my own but I did use this article to fact check my memory.
