Kristen Gyles | The original April fools

One day, the BBC aired a short report on its programme Panorama, giving its viewers a glimpse into how spaghetti makes its way to our plates. The report showed video footage of a Swiss family picking spaghetti off a tree and went into a few interesting details about how mature spaghetti is harvested and subsequently sun-dried for household consumption. The report even mentioned how Swiss farmers had expected a heavy spaghetti crop that spring due to the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.

It was all an April Fools’ joke.

The joke was televised on April 1, 1957. However, April Fools’ Day had been around for centuries prior and continues to be a once-in-a-boring-year opportunity for us to try our best at out-pranking each other. Historians cannot agree definitively on where or how the tradition started, but quite a few theories link the origin of April Fools’ Day to the same general occurrence – the shift to the Gregorian calendar we use today.

It’s a long, but fascinating story. The Gregorian calendar was derived from the Julian calendar, which was derived from the Roman calendar, which started out as a 10-month, 304 day calendar. The Roman calendar was based on the lunar cycle and started with Martius as its first month, followed by Aprilis, then Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and finally, December.

Not too far along the primary education syllabus, a child starts learning about the names of different shapes. After learning that a square has four equal sides, we learned as children that a six-sided shape is called a hexagon, a seven-sided shape is called a heptagon or septagon, an eight-sided shape is called an octagon and so on. Later on, we were taught that an octopus is so called because it has eight legs and that a decade is so called because it comprises 10 years. Also, if a country has septennial elections, it means that up to seven years can pass between successive elections.

EIGHTH MONTH

So, if you have ever wondered why October is not the eighth month, but the tenth, now you know. It was originally the eighth month – just like November was the ninth and December was the tenth. Unlike the original seventh to tenth months, however, other months were named after Roman gods. For example, the first month Martius was named after Mars, the god of war, while the fourth month, Junius, was named after Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth.

Eventually, what was originally a 10-month, 304-day calendar evolved into a 12-month, 355-day calendar with Januarius and Februarius being added at the end. Quintilis was renamed to July in honour of Julius Caesar and Sextilis was renamed to August in honour of Augustus Caesar.

However, the Romans soon realised they had a big problem. The lunar year, on which their calendar was based, had fallen out of sync with the solar year which played a major role in determining the timing of religious celebrations, including Easter. They tried to address this by adding intercalary months to extend the length of the calendar year but this turned out to be chaotic.

The Julian calendar made several ‘improvements’ to the Roman calendar including the transition from a lunar system to a solar one. Another significant adjustment was a shift in the beginning of the year from March (Martius) to January (Januarius), for political reasons.

LINK BACK

So, how does all this link back to April Fools’ Day?

While January 1 had already been the start of the year under the Julian calendar, that calendar was not nearly as widely used as the Gregorian calendar is today. Eventually, Pope Gregory XIII made his own adjustments which included recognizing the year as being 365.2425 days long and not 365.25 days long, as was previously thought. After centuries of a year being reckoned as being 11 minutes longer than it actually is, so much time had been ‘lost’ resulting in a misalignment between the seasons of the year and the months we currently associate them with. This misalignment had caused the date of the spring equinox to shift by about 10 days – which had implications for Easter. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. But with the increasing misalignment between the calendar and the seasons, one day the spring equinox would eventually occur in May or June and Easter celebrations would therefore start in the summer. The Pope really didn’t want that.

He changed the calendar by skipping 10 days in October 1582, so that October 4 was followed by October 15. This would recover the lost time. So, in countries that recognised the authority of the Pope, Thursday, October 4, 1582 was followed by Friday, October 15, 1582.

But, more relevant to our April Fools’ Day discussion here is the fact that as Pope Gregory’s calendar became increasingly utilised, more and more countries abandoned their own calendars and recognised January 1 as the start of the year in keeping with the Gregorian calendar. Of course, there will always be a stubborn minority who resists what they see as arbitrary and pointless changes. Especially since they did not subject themselves to the Pope’s authority, they held on to their own religious tradition and April 1 became associated with the old new year celebration since it was around the time of the spring equinox, which many Christians already associated with new beginnings and the rebirth of nature. Some historians have it that as time progressed, these people were called April Fools for celebrating the new year on April 1 when as far as everyone else was concerned, the new year had long passed in January!

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com