Why celebrate April Fools’ Day?

Analysts say it’s good to have a day to express inner clown

To all the pranksters in the world, congratulations. The one day in the year you have permission to fool your friends and families is Saturday.

Although April Fools’ Day is not a public holiday in any country, it has been celebrated globally for centuries. The roots are fuzzy. Some say it started as a way to mark a changing season. Others say it’s tied to a calendar shift in France in the 1500s that moved New Year’s Day from the end of March to Jan. 1, “fooling” some who stuck to the original calendar.

“The origin of April Fools’ Day is very obscure. There is a variety of different explanations, reasons and causes, so I can’t give a definite answer,” said Joseph Boskin, author of Humor and Social Change and a Boston University history professor.

Alex Boese, author of The Museum of Hoaxes: A History of Outrageous Pranks

and Deceptions, speculates it probably originated as a festival to celebrate spring.

In the 19th century, it was considered a children’s holiday in Europe and North America. Children got to misbehave for a day, despite their parents’ annoyance. Streets in London and New York were filled with children known as “street urchins,” who devised all kinds of mischief.

In the 20th century, April Fools’ Day evolved into a global holiday, and journalists started to embrace it, using it to show off their creativity by writing crazy stories. In the 21st century, companies such as Google, Virgin and BMW discovered it’s fun to connect to customers with a sense of humor, according to Boese.

April Fools’ Day is useful because people need a day to express their inner clown in an environment where playfulness is not always revered, Boskin said.

Allowing people to misbehave and break social rules for one day reinforces the social order, Boese said.

“A glimpse of what chaos would look like reminds everyone why they need to behave for the rest of the year,” he said.