One Fact About April Fools Day You Should Know

April 1 Is Believed to Have Been First Associated With Foolishness in 1392.

The knight and squire from the Ellesmere manuscript, an early 15th century manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)The knight and squire from the Ellesmere manuscript, an early 15th century manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the 1392 story collection The Canterbury Tales, perhaps wrote the first recorded association between April 1 and foolishness. However, he did not use the term “April Fools” and his writing is open to interpretation.

The April Fools text comes from The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, which tells the story of a rooster outwitting a fox. The possible reference to April Fools’ Day comes in the middle of the story, where Chaucer writes:

When that the monthe in which the world bigan
That highte March, whan God first maked man,
Was complet, and passed were also
Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two

According to Hoaxes.org:

One way of reading this (and, as we shall see, not the only possible way) is that it’s a roundabout, repetitive way of saying the story takes place on April 1, because this is the day you arrive at a) when March is complete, and b) when 32 days (thritty days and two) have passed since March began (i.e., April 1 = March 32). However, it’s also possible these lines indicate a date of April 2. After all, if 32 days have passed since March began, that would land us on the 2nd, not the 1st. The precise meaning is ambiguous.

Since the story is about a rooster tricking a fox out of becoming his meal, Chaucer experts have argued that the author specified April 1 since it is associated with foolishness. However, this may just be a modern people projecting the current zeitgeist onto the past.

Source: heavy.com