The cruel origin of April Fools' Day, a tradition (very different from the current one) that has been celebrated for more than 1,500 years

Illustration of the slaughter of children ordered by Herod, according to the biblical story, which gave rise to April Fool's Day.

(Credit: Spencer Arnold Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

(CNN Spanish) -- 

Ready to spend (and receive) a good dose of jokes?

You may enjoy as a child the Day of the Innocents that is celebrated in Latin America and Spain without knowing that, at the origin of this celebration, what there is is a dark story of cruelty and death that has nothing to do with humor, but yes a lot with innocence.

Herod, the Magi and the Biblical story of a cruel slaughter

The Christian origin of April Fool's Day must be found in the Gospel of Matthew, one of the books of the New Testament in which the life of Jesus is recounted.

It turns out that some wise men from the East — whom we would later know as the Magi — announced that the messiah was about to be born who, according to the prophecies, would become the king of Israel.

And that they intended to go and worship him.

Herod the Great—then King of Judea by mandate of the Roman Empire—told them that when they found him, they should let him know where he was so he too could go and worship him.

However, what he really wanted was to kill him, afraid that he might lose his power in the hands of this baby.

After knowing and worshiping Jesus, warned by a revelation, the wise men decided not to inform Herod.

And then "when Herod realized that he had been tricked by the magicians, he was enraged and ordered to kill all the children who were in Bethlehem, in the whole region, from two years old and under, according to the time that he had carefully ascertained from magicians," says the Bible.

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Bust of Herod the Great, a central figure in the origin of April Fool's Day.

(Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

(What happened to Jesus in the meantime? The biblical account says that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to flee with the baby and the mother to Egypt to prevent Herod from killing him.)

Over time, the children killed by Herod's order in Bethlehem became "Innocent Saints" and martyrs for Christians.

How many were they?

Throughout history, completely different figures have been handled.

The Greek liturgy, for example, spoke of the death of 14,000 men, a number that rose to 64,000 for Syrians and 144,000 among authors of the Middle Ages, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Modern authors, however, established much lower figures ranging from six to 20, considering that Bethlehem was a small town.

(It is worth mentioning that the famous historian Flavio Josefo, a key source of information about the time of the birth of Jesus, did not mention this order of Herod in his works, according to the encyclopedia. However, he did recount other cruelties committed by him in the stretch end of his reign).

Why December 28?

The link with Christmas

The Latin Church, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, instituted the celebration on a date that is not exactly known but which took place between the end of the 4th century and the end of the 5th century. In other words, the celebration of the Holy Innocents has more than 1,500 years of history.

The date of December 28 is not linked to the events narrated in the Bible -where there are no exact chronological references- but to the celebration of Christmas.

The objective was for the commemoration of the Holy Innocents to be framed within the "octave of Christmas", the eight-day period in which the birth of Jesus is celebrated, with the understanding that the children that Herod ordered to be killed, to the Christian view, they gave their lives for the messiah.

(The date of Christmas, by the way, is not linked to the chronology of the events either. Here is the explanation)

"The Festival of Fools"

For the Middle Ages, the celebration of April Fool's Day coincided with a popular festival called "Feast of Fools" in which a joke pope or bishop was chosen and in which ecclesiastical rituals were parodied, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

As part of April Fool's Day "parents temporarily abdicated their authority" and "in convents and monasteries, younger nuns and monks were allowed to act as abbess and abbot for a day," says the Encyclopedia.

The festivities, which originally had probably been an adaptation of the famous Saturnalia of the Roman Empire, became a "mockery of Christian morality and worship," explains the encyclopedia, which lasted until the 16th century despite the sanctions of church.

Day of the Innocents