April Fools Day

A lot of people love to play pranks of April Fools jokes on their friends and family but have no idea where the origins of these jokes came from. If you didn’t know April Fools is the first day of April where people celebrate by playing practical jokes or spreading hoaxes, the joke is often followed by the perpetrator yelling April Fools! Many companies today have started to commemorate April Fools jokes in their marketing schemes by showing that they are going to come out with a crazy new product or get rid of one of their beloved products. An example of this was yesterday when McDonald's announced that they were implementing a new all pickle burger, this had some mixed reactions where some fans thought this was a hilarious joke while others were outraged with even the thought of a McPickle. This is a key problem with doing an April Fool’s joke because you never know how people are going to react. People can be all about the joke and laugh at it or they can be annoyed and you could receive some backlash for it.

There are many disputed stories of the true origins of April Fool’s day but the most commonly cited one comes from France in 1582. This all started when France had switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The people who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the New Year had moved to January 1^st, still celebrated New Year’s during the last week of March through April 1^st, this cause the people that did not know the calendar had switched to become the butt of peoples jokes. People that were pranked or were the butt of the joke were often said to have a paper fish placed on their backs which symbolized a gullible person. Thus, creating what is commonly known today as April Fools day.