How Christians Gave Fools Their Own Day

If you missed New Year’s Day, April Fools’ was created for you.

Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1, and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1, became the butt of jokes and hoaxes.

(from history.com)

Increasingly annoyed by Martin Luther and the growing Protestant Reformation, the pope convened an ecumenical council in the northern Italian city of Trent. The Council officially declared much of the Protestant ideology as heresy. As modern-day politicians slip partisan or pork-barrel amendments into unrelated legislation, the Council of Trent added to its decrees a provision to clean up the Julian calendar and provide for a more consistent scheduling of Easter. Eventually the new Gregorian calendar became the standard in most of the world.

So how did they simplify the scheduling of Easter? The Christ’s resurrection is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox (the first day of spring).

As with Christmas, Easter is based – co-opted, if you will – on pagan celebrations related to cycles of the moon, the equinox, the seasons and resultant things in nature. Spring festivals celebrated the earth’s return to fertility and the birth of many, ahem, creatures. Christians related resurrection with rebirth and consequently, the Easter egg. So of course, in modern times, the eggs became chocolate.