April Fools’ Day in the Netherlands

Bike in the sky

Bike in the sky. April Fool’s joke in a 1920s newspaper (retouched photo). Credits: Spaarnestad Photo (no known copyrights)

April Fools’ Day is celebrated in the Netherlands. The first recorded April Fools’ joke in Dutch dates to about 1560, when a poem mentioned how a servant recognized a prank that his master was trying to pull on him.1

The best April Fools’ joke that I’ve seen up close was when I was studying at the University of Twente. The nearby Grolsch brewery had an ad in the paper for a trial with a beer pipeline directly to student housing on campus, which would be more efficient than the trucks full of kegs that drove across campus every day. Students that were interested in the free trial were asked to come to the Grolsch brewery on 1 April. Of course, everybody suspected a prank, but many students went ‘just in case.’ Did I mention free beer?

Isn’t it too bad that the sense of humor of our ancestors rarely got documented? Only when things got out of hand, will we get a glimpse of the pranks they pulled. Have you ever found any records that told you about your ancestor’s character? Did one of your relatives ever fool you on April 1st? I would love to hear your stories.


Sources
  1. “1 aprilgrap” [April Fools’ joke], Wikipedia, http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_aprilgrap, version 9 March 2015 17:46.
About Yvette Hoitink

Yvette Hoitink, CG®, QG™ is a professional genealogist in the Netherlands. She holds the Certified Genealogist credential from the Board for Certification of Genealogists and has a post-graduate diploma in Family and Local History from the University of Dundee. She has been doing genealogy for over 30 years and helps people from across the world find their ancestors in the Netherlands. Read about Yvette's professional genealogy services.

Comments

  1. I have a story about two grandchildren of Jenny Schreurs Freers and Henry Barney Freers. Phyllis and John were cousins, the children of sisters who were very close. They lived on the same street. John was painfully shy and Phyllis often tried to set him up with girls. When Brouds department store burned, they were giving away damaged mannequins. Phyllis took one and dressed her up and set her on the back porch. She called John and asked him to come over for dinner to meet her friend. She was beautiful, she told him, but very quiet. John did come for dinner that night and outrage and hilarity ensued.

  2. Canada converted to the metric system when I was a child, phased in over a number of years. Each year something new would change – inches to centimeters one year, Fahrenheit to Celsius another year, miles to kilometers yet another. During those years, my father ran a large department store in a small town. One April 1 morning, the local radio station announced that this was the year we were switching to metric time. The DJ told listeners that they’d better go to my father’s store and ask him about getting their metric clocks. My dad was pretty confused in the course of his day, what with all the customers he had asking him for metric clocks.

Leave comment

*