April Fools Day To Be Moved To 2nd April

Change your calendars

This year, in the UK, April Fool's Day has been moved to 2nd April. This woefully unpublicised decision is set to catch many of the country's pranksters off guard and, perhaps more worryingly, prolong the suffering of prankstees for a further 24 hours.

The decision is tied up with proposed changes to the Bank Holiday system in the UK. Bank Holidays were first introduced in the Bank Holidays Act of 1871. Authored by Sir John Lubbock, a banker with a passion for cricket, he designated official holidays throughout the year based on his home county's village match calendar. In England and Wales these were Easter Monday, Whit Monday, and the 1st Monday in August. In Ireland (still under UK rule at the time), St Stephen's Day was added and in England and Wales, Boxing Day. In Scotland the bank holidays were New Year's Day, Good Friday, 1st Monday in May, 1st Monday in August and Christmas Day. In England, Wales and Ireland, Good Friday and Christmas Day were considered traditional holidays and were therefore not included in the official Bank Holiday list.

Although the Act was repealed in 1971, it was replaced with the Banking & Financial Dealings Act, in which the tradition of bank holidays was continued though some changes were made. The date of the August Bank Holiday was changed from the 1st Monday in August to the last Monday in August, and Whit Monday was replaced by the Late Spring Bank Holiday, fixed as the last Monday in May. In January 2007, the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007 was given royal assent, making 30 November (or the nearest Monday if a weekend) a Bank Holiday in Scotland.

There has since been many campaigns to overhaul the Bank Holiday system in the UK, including plans to establish more public holidays in line with other European countries. In a widely unreported move, and a precursor to further reforms, the Tory government last year approved the scrapping of the May Day Bank Holiday. It will be replaced with two Bank Holidays, one on 1st April and, in England, one on 23rd April (St George's Day) and, in Wales, one on 1st March (St David's Day). An amendment to the Banking & Financial Dealings Act was passed through parliament in September 2014, allowing for the official change to be phased in by 2018, although exactly what "phased in" means is unfortunately unspecified.

The choice of 1st April for the additional Bank Holiday has been chosen due to the moving festival of Easter. The date of Easter, decided by the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, is traditionally taken as the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or soonest after 21 March each year, although there are complications with this simple definition. The result is that Easter Sunday can vary by almost a month. In the 21st century, for example, the earliest Easter Sunday is on 23rd March (2008) and the latest on 25th April (2038). In order to give a reasonable spread of Bank Holidays throughout the year (with other anticipated additions), the 1st April was chosen to be near to the median date of Easter and to establish an unmovable date during April.

April Fool's Day has been celebrated for possibly an entire millenium

Government ministers were of course aware of the traditional significance of that date in the UK calendar, and indeed in many other parts of the world. Although there is no official regulation of traditional 'days' such as April Fool's Day (the same is true of Valentine's Day for example), UK authorities have further decided to officially "recognise" April Fool's Day. And in a highly controversial move, and in anticipation of the Bank Holiday change which will become official during 2018, the traditional celebration of April Fool's Day on 1st April has now been shifted to 2nd April as of 2016.

This unpopular and frankly ridiculous decision has been deliberately played down by the government and lost amongst the usual pre-election rhetoric with which the media are now replete. But 1st April pranksters all over the UK are being made to look like fools themselves and are unwittingly performing their stunningly inventive and hilarious japes a whole day too early!

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