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Various myths about the origins of April Fools’ Day have circulated around the world, but Dr. Helen Rountree, assistant professor of sociology at Old Dominion University, says the most popular is that AH Fools’ Day originated in France in 1564 after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. "Prior to 1564, Europe used the Julian calendar, which was not too accurate and did not correspond exactly to the rotation of the earth,” she says. “Before the calendar changed, New Year’s Day was on March 25—close to Lent—and people would wait until the holy days were over before celebrating the new year. Usually they celebrated h close to April 1.”
Once the calendar changed, Rountree explains, New Year’s Day moved to Jan. 1.
"Those who forgot the new date continued to celebrate h around the first of April. When they did this, they were mocked and called April fools for forgetting,” she adds.
E. King Reid, another assistant professor of sociology at ODU, says the nickname also played a part in an old Jewish tradition of “smartening up the dummies’’ who didn't know that Noah sent the dove out of the ark too soon to find land.
"Since then, anybody who was not aware of this was called an April fool,” Reid says.
Rountree adds that since the dove was sent out early because Noah was anxiously waiting for the flood to
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