A'fikomen: The Origin of April Fool's Day

Today marks the juxtaposition of the first night of Passover (starting today at sundown) and what Americans celebrate as April Fool's day.

What few Americans know is that April Fool's Day has its origins in the Passover story. It became dissociated with Passover when it was adopted to the Gregorian calendar, switching it from a lunar holiday like all Jewish holidays to a solar holiday and fixing the date.

April Fool's Day derives from the Jewish holiday called A'fikomen, which originally came 8 days before Passover. Passover, of course, celebrates the Exodus, as everyone knows. And everyone knows that before the Jews left Egypt, Moses tried convincing Pharaoh of the validity of the Jewish religion by matching wits with the priests of Amun, a manifestation of the Egyptian sun god. This famous battle of tricks, called the A'fikomen in ancient Hebrew, did not convince Pharaoh. It took the ten plagues sent by G_d to do that, thus symbolizing the futility of human actions in comparison with the power of G_d.

The battle of tricks between Moses and the priests of Amun were celebrated in a kind of foolish, children's holiday 8 days before Passover called A'fikomen. During this time parents would hide treats and toys and children would have to find them.

This holiday of tricks was condemned by early Christians as belittling the sanctity of Passover (now being transformed into the Christian Easter) and being incompatible with the Christian holiday. But as anti-Semitism grew, the silliness of the holiday was seen as a way of belittling Judaism, so Pope John John III in the 11th century revived the holiday, fixing the time of its observance at April 1st according to the solar calendar and renaming it April Fool's Day.

So today, as we have a coincidental juxtaposition of April Fool's Day and Passover, the holiday it was once associated with, we can reflect on just what April Fool's Day means.

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