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Here’s a kindly early morning warning: today is April Fools Day. The origin of today’s pranking is sometimes linked to Pope Gregory XIII, the father of the Gregorian calendar, who in 1582 moved the date of New Year from the end of March to 1 January. Fools were the gullible who fell foul of the new date.

Humour plays its part in keeping us human. We know that laughter forges bonds and creates a shared world, and in doing all of that, it helps build trust. The thing that a prank plays upon is existing trust betrayed, it doesn’t work without that. In 2020, Google famously ‘cancelled’ April Fools’ Day as inappropriate when pandemic fear and information mistrust were heightened. So, what happens to humour in an era of mistrust, when there is little trust to be pranked upon?

Socrates tells us that all philosophers will be seen as fools, gently laughed at as the learned who lack common sense. Aristophanes plays use sharper humour to ridicule the politician who, far from being a gentle fool, casts the people as fools. Judging the deceptions of the politicians, the people laugh such false leaders out of town.

Perhaps surprisingly, both joyful laughter and cruel mockery play important roles in the Scriptures. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, is the first biblical character to laugh when told she will bear a longed-for child in her old age. And God in Jesus is mocked, ridiculed and crucified. This mockery serves as the backdrop to salvation revealed.

Christian ‘fooling’ takes another form, that of the ‘holy fool’. In a tradition most famously associated with St Francis of Assisi, worldly comforts are renounced in favour of a peace and wisdom that comes from living simply and mercifully. ‘Holy fools’ are pretty uncomfortable prophets to have around, they reveal the shallowness and callousness of the world, and upend its values. They appeal to our deeper humanity.

So, if you fall for a prank today, remember the paradox of the April Fool. Pranks play on the very thing that makes our world go round: on our trusting human nature. In a moment when our faith in a trusting, shared world feels so threatened, humour is a serious part of how we resist. It’s how we create shared worlds in which we can weep and laugh with others. And maybe it can still help us laugh out of town those whose brutal and cold worldliness and deceptions seek to tell us otherwise.

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