April Fool’s Day

April Fools' Day (sometimes called April Fool's Day or All Fools' Day) is celebrated every year on the first day of April as a day when people play practical jokes and hoaxes on each other. The jokes and their victims are known as "April fools". Hoax stories may be reported by the press and other media on this day and explained on subsequent days. Popular since the 19th century, the day is not a national holiday in any country, but it is well known in Canada, Europe, Australia, Brazil and the United States. In the Middle Ages, New Year's Day was celebrated on Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, in most of Europe. The feast's octave was 1 April. The holiday may have originated in France as part of the shift to celebrating New Year's on 1 January, a move formalized as part of the 1564 Edict of Roussillon. It may have appeared earlier in Chaucer, but this is now generally discounted.

The origins of April Fools' Day are obscure. The most commonly cited theory holds that it dates from about 1582, the year France adopted the Gregorian Calendar, which shifted the observance of New Year's Day from the end of March (around the time of the vernal equinox) to the first of January. According to popular lore, some folks, out of ignorance, stubbornness, or both, continued to ring in the New Year on April first and were made the butt of jokes and pranks on account of their "foolishness." This became an annual tradition which ultimately spread throughout Europe and other parts of the world.

Some Pro’s from April fools Day is that you can get a really good laugh out of it. A con would be that you hurt someone’s feeling by pranking them.