When I was little, my family celebrated April Fools’ Day with food-related pranks. For dinner, we enjoyed a “cake” made of meatloaf with mashed potato “frosting” and a “pizza” made out of cookie dough. These harmless jokes brought a little silliness to the day that we could all share, without anyone really feeling like a fool. As the holiday approached this year, I was curious about what I could find in the Library of Congress collections about the history of this goofy tradition.
The first thing that I discovered was that no one really knows how April Fools’ Day began. Library staff in the American Folklife Center shared a detailed history of the holiday in their blog “April Fools: The Roots of an International Tradition.” Their research shows that there are many theories about how the holiday came to be (some of which started as pranks themselves) but no conclusive answer. The first concrete reference to playing an April Fools’ prank to mark the holiday comes from a 1561 poem – and the celebration has only grown from there.
To discover the ways in which kids and families have marked the holiday, I turned to Chronicling America, a website sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress which provides access to digitized newspapers. After looking at some of the articles in the April Fools’ Day Chronicling America Research Guide, I started my own searches of the database—which you and your family can replicate at home! To narrow in on articles published on April Fools’ Day about the holiday, I set start and end dates of April 1 for specific years and used the term “April fool.” This was a useful search strategy, and I found a treasure trove of interesting articles.
One way in which kids in the past learned about April Fools’ Day was through the adventures of Uncle Wiggily, a rabbit character invented by Howard R. Garis. Garis was a prolific children’s book author. Amongst his other publications, Garis shared the stories of Uncle Wiggily’s adventures in daily updates that were published in newspapers across the country. For decades, young readers and their parents were able to follow the adventures of Uncle Wiggily and the other forest creatures he encountered. On April Fools’ Day, Uncle Wiggily learned how to dodge pranks – and shared some with his friends.
Take a look at this introduction to an Uncle Wiggly story published in the Evening Edition of the El Paso Herald on April 1, 1918. Can you identify what pranks Uncle Wiggily is watching out for?
In this part of the story, the smart rabbit looks out for some common food pranks – a lot meaner than the meatloaf “cakes” I ate as a kid. These pranks included switching out salt for sugar, adding lemon juice to water, or adding pepper to a napkin to make the user sneeze. In a later April Fools’ story, published in 1920 in the Washington Herald, the same salt and sugar trick comes into play again – this time with a twist.
In this story, squirrel Billie thinks he’s going to pull a “double prank”. He believes his brother is going to attempt the tried-and-tested salt and sugar prank and tries to foil his plan. Do you think it’s going to work? Who will be the “April fool” this time? Read on to find out!
As the story continues, we find out that Billie’s guess was wrong! Johnnie’s kind prank was to hide a flower for Uncle Wiggily, instead of replacing his sugar. Sometimes, jokes on April Fools’ Day have a nice twist. But because Billie had tried to reverse Johnnie’s prank, he ends up giving Uncle Wiggily salt instead of sugar anyways!
Silly twists on pranks happened all the time to Uncle Wiggily. For example, in the story from 1922, below, Uncle Wiggily expects to find a prank in a basket, but finds something sweet instead!
![Transcription: “April Fool!” laughed Baby Bunty again. Uncle Wiggily said nothing but he sat down rather hard and ate his breakfast. And when Baby Bunty said “Oh, look out the window and see who’s coming!” Uncle Wiggily never looked up from his morning paper. But some one was coming along the path to the hollow stump bungalow. They were Curly and Floppy Twistytail, the piggie boys. Floppy had a little basket. “Do you want to look in this and see what there is?” asked Floppy, as he and his brother came in after carefully wiping their feet on the mat. “Well, I can pretty nearly guess what’s in the basket,” said the bunny gentleman. It’s some sneezing powder or a lot of dried leaves! You can’t April Fool me again.” “Oh, really, we wouldn’t do such a thing!” grunted Curly. “I’ll open the basket!” cried Baby Bunty. So she did, and inside was a lovely piece of cake that Mrs. Twistytail had sent to Uncle Wiggily. “April Fool!” grunted the piggie boys. “Well, this is a proper kind of April [Fool joke!”]](https://blogs.loc.gov/families/files/2025/03/Ogden-Standard-4.1.22-1.jpg)
As Uncle Wiggily continues through his April Fools’ Day in 1922, he experiences other pranks too, some not as nice. Someone tells him there’s a hole in his coat when there isn’t, and he’s given a candy only to discover it’s sour. In this story, Uncle Wiggily finally gets to pull his own prank, convincing a foe that there’s something scary behind him.
Throughout the Uncle Wiggily stories, young readers learned all about gentle pranks they could play on friends and family. None of those described, such as switching out salty or sour for sweet, making someone sneeze or turn to look behind themselves, or giving a surprising gift, could really scare or hurt someone. For Uncle Wiggily and his friends, April Fools’ Day was a holiday for silly jokes and laughing together.
Of course, not all April Fools’ Day pranks were as simple – deeper dives into newspapers from this era show a wide array of pranks to play on the holiday, from gluing money to the ground to making a prank phone call. As technology and habits have changed over the last one hundred years, pranks have evolved too. But, some old favorites have stuck around. What type of prank would you like to pull? How will you celebrate April Fools’ Day this year?
Additional Resources:
- Uncle Wiggily starred in both newspaper articles and books. Check out this search to see the Library’s digitized collection of Uncle Wiggily stories.
- Read ten more April Fools’ articles from Chronicling America in this round-up blog.
- Read a “Today in History” blog post about April 1.