All Fools' Day
is celebrated every year on the first day of April as a day when people play practical jokes and hoaxes on each other. The jokes and their victims are known as "April fools". Hoax stories may be reported by the press and other media on this day and explained on subsequent days. Popular since the 19th century, the day is not a national holiday in any country, but it is well known in Canada, Europe, Australia, Brazil and the United States.
The earliest recorded association between 1 April and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1392).
Some writers suggest that the restoration of 1 January as New Year's Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain EARLIER references.
Comparable prank days
28th December, the equivalent day in SPAIN and the Hispanic America, is also the Christian day of celebration of the "Day of the Holy Innocents".
After somebody plays a joke or a prank on somebody else, the joker usually cries out, in some regions of Ibero-America:Inocente palomita que te dejaste engañar ("You innocent little dove that let yourself be fooled").
Nevertheless, on the Spanish island of Minorca, Dia d'enganyar ("Fooling day") is celebrated on 1 April because MENORCA was a British possession during part of the 18th century.
In Brazil, the "Dia da mentira" ("Day of the lie") is also celebrated on 1 April.
