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📰 Breaking News 📰
The U.S. president signed an executive order declaring April 1 as “Donald Trump Day.” It will be a day when no one is allowed to speak a word of truth.
April Fools!
Thank goodness no is being named after him—though, if we’re being honest, I wouldn’t entirely put it past him to try to declare a holiday named after himself. If he did, April 1 would be an appropriate day, since he is the biggest fool of all.
April 1 has always been one of those quietly delightful days—one where the rules loosen just a little, where humor takes center stage, and where we’re all reminded not to take ourselves too seriously.
The origins of April Fool’s Day are a bit of a mystery, but the most widely accepted explanation takes us back to 16th-century Europe. For centuries, many people celebrated the new year not on January 1, but around the end of March, often culminating on April 1. When Charles IX of France reformed the calendar in 1564 and moved the start of the new year to January 1, not everyone got the memo—or chose to follow it. Those who continued celebrating in early April were mocked, teased, and labeled “April fools.”
Over time, those teasing traditions evolved into something more playful. In France, people still celebrate poisson d’avril, or “April fish,” where children try to sneak paper fish onto someone’s back without them noticing. It’s harmless, a little silly, and entirely in the spirit of the day.
There’s also a deeper thread that connects April Fool’s Day to older spring traditions. Across cultures, the arrival of spring has long been associated with unpredictability—weather that can’t make up its mind, seasons shifting in unexpected ways. Festivals like Holi in India or Hilaria in Rome embraced laughter, disguise, and inversion of social norms. In that sense, April Fool’s Day feels like a continuation of something ancient: a moment when the world turns upside down, if only briefly.
Some of the most famous April Fool’s pranks in history are almost works of art in their own right. In 1957, the BBC aired a segment showing Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from trees. At the time, spaghetti wasn’t widely familiar in Britain, and many viewers believed it. Some even called in asking how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. It remains one of the most famous and successful pranks ever broadcast because it was delivered with complete seriousness.
Decades later, the BBC did it again, this time with a nature documentary revealing that penguins could fly. The visuals were convincing, the narration authoritative, and for a moment, it felt just plausible enough to make you wonder.
In 1996, Taco Bell took out full-page ads claiming they had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it the “Taco Liberty Bell.” People were outraged—until they realized it was April 1. The company later revealed it was all a joke, and the publicity was priceless.
And in more recent years, Google turned April Fool’s Day into something of an annual tradition, launching elaborate fake products like “Google Nose” or “Gmail Motion.” These pranks were often so well executed that people almost wished they were real.
Here in Vermont, we get an extra helping of fools—just a few months later. In Burlington, the “fools” come out around August 1 for the annual Festival of Fools, when street performers take over Church Street Marketplace and City Hall Park. Jugglers, acrobats, comedians, and buskers fill the streets with laughter and spectacle. It’s not about tricking people so much as delighting them—but it carries the same spirit: a celebration of humor, surprise, and a willingness to be entertained.
What all of these traditions and pranks have in common is not just deception, but delight. The best April Fool’s jokes don’t humiliate; they invite us in on the joke, even if it’s only after the fact.
And maybe that’s why the day endures.
In a world that often feels heavy, serious, and unrelenting, April Fool’s Day offers something rare: permission to laugh, to be a little gullible, to enjoy the absurd. It reminds us that not everything has to be optimized, productive, or even entirely true.
Sometimes, it’s enough to be surprised.
So if someone tries to send you on a ridiculous errand today, or you find yourself momentarily believing something just a little too strange to be real—take it in stride.
After all, we’re all fools today.
And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
