April Fool's

Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: Ephesians 5:4

"A popular theory suggests that April Fools’ day is a remnant of early ‘renewal festivals’ which took place in many different cultures to

mark the beginning of spring. 

The Romans, for example, had a festival named Hilaria on 25 th March, which they marked with masquerades.... these festivities typically involved “ritualized forms of mayhem and misrule.” Participants donned disguises, played tricks on friends as well as strangers, and inverted the social order.

An ancient Roman myth also tells the story of the God Pluto who abducted Proserpina, the Goddess of grain and harvest. Proserpina's mother could only hear the voice of her daughter when she searched for her in the vast expense of the underworld. This fruitless search ended in vain and inspired the idea of a fool's errand. 

During the middle ages, a number of celebrations developed which

appear to have evolved from earlier pagan festivals and which served as direct predecessors to April Fools’ Day. The most important of these was the Festus Fatuorum (the Feast of Fools) which evolved out of the Saturnalia. 

On this day, (mostly observed in

France) celebrants elected a mock pope and made fun of church rituals. The church, of course, did its best to stamp out the tradition, but it persisted until the sixteenth century. In late medieval Europe, fools, jokers, or jesters, as they came to be known, were popular entertainers who performed in town squares and royal courts.....it seems clear that the tradition of a day devoted to honoring merriment and misrule had ancient origins which were most likely rooted in springtime festivities." 

AncientOrigins