History of April Fool's Day

Many of the ancient cultures such as Romans and Hindus and the medieval Europeans used to celebrate New Year's Day on sometime near the vernal equinox that could range from March 20th to April 5th. In the Julian calendar, April 1st was designated as the New Year's Day and was so celebrated till 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII ordered the adoption of the new Gregorian Calendar, which specified January 1st as the New Year's Day. However, due to slow communications and resistance of people to change their traditions, many people continued to celebrate New Year's Day as before on 1st of April. Scottish only adopted the new calendar in 1660, Germans, Danish and Norwegians in 1700 and English in 1752.

Many French resisted the change and neoiites dubbed them as fools and played pranks on them. They started sending them on 'fool's errands', sent them the fake invitations for parties and tricked them into believing something false. The victims were called 'Poisson d'Avril' or 'April Fish' as the nave fish gets caught easily and children would often tag of a fish's picture on someone's back. Thus, April Fool's Day originated and was popularly celebrated in England and in the American colonies. It evolved and was caught on quickly throughout the world to trick each other and have fun. Even today, people play pranks on each other on this day in the memory of those tradition-obsessed 'fools'.

Perhaps the best illustration of the April Fool's Pranks of the 19th century is the Thomas Nast's illustration, originally published in the April 2, 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly. It highlights the various pranks that were popularly played at the time with its caption as 'All Fool's Day'. Some of the pranks shown here include women visiting an older man wearing beards and moustaches, Civil War Soldiers tricking each other such as a soldier barring the view by holding his hand on in front of the binoculars of a friend and a sailor doing the same by holding his hat over the telescope of a friend. The other tricks include a young boy tying a string on the dress of a little girl while a schoolteacher is shown with the sign of 'Old Fool' on his back. APRIL FOOL DAY GAMES Baby Sounds

This is a fun and active family game fit for April Fools party for kids and will simply be loved by children. It makes for a quality time for parents to interact and have fun with their children and look like a fool to them as they make sounds or babble like infants and babies. You can also add more fun by copying sounds your kids used to make when they were small and tell them that and see how disbelieving they look and how they grin, smile and chuckle on hearing about themselves making such silly sounds.

Items Needed: Black satin blindfold (you may use any piece of cloth instead), and A broom. How To Prepare: Make everybody stand in a circle. Choose one person to be 'it' and make him stand in the center of the circle. Blindfold 'it'. Give him or her a broom. How To Play: It has to spin around and stop suddenly after two or three rounds. Then he/she has to point a broom to the person standing straight and say Baby Talk. The person to whom the broom is pointed has to make sounds like a baby. He/she can make crying sounds or say words like ma-ma, na-na or chuckle like a baby. It has to guess the name of the person. If the name is guessed right, the person to whom the broom was pointed becomes it.] The game can also be easily improvised upon by adding more activities to be performed by it every time he/she gets the name of the person wrong or to be performed by the person whose name is guessed correctly.

Wisdom Sayings Game For April Fools Day

This is a passive board game for players who are more than 12 years of age. More than two people can play it with ease and one can easily improvise upon this game to include more activities and make it funky.

Items Needed:

A long list of little known and interesting sayings from around the world, Sheets of thick paper, Pen, and Scissors. How To Prepare: Cut the paper sheet in the size of large-sized playing cards. Write one half of the saying on one side of the card. Turn the card and write the other half of the saying. Writing should not be visible from back side of the paper. Arrange the cards in a stack with first half side facing upwards. How To Play: One person conducts the game and keeps the score for everybody, if there is a large group. Shuffle the cards. The players have to pick up the cards one by one and try to complete the saying with wisdom of their own. Since most of the sayings are little known, most of the people won't know the actual proverb and will come up with funny answers. People with closest answer or the funniest answer is declared to be the 'April Fool Of The Day' and gets a funny prize. Here are some examples of such proverbs for your convenience: