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April begins with a day of fun and jokes—April Fool’s Day. No one really knows when this custom began but it has been kept for hundreds of years.

The saddest day of the Christian Year, when Jesus was put to death.

The 1st Sunday in April is called Daffodil Sunday. In Victorian times families picked daffodils from their gardens and took them to local hospitals to give to the sick.

The happiest day of the Christian Year, when Jesus rose from the dead.

On 6 April there used to be Candle Auctions. A candle was lit and a pin stuck in it about two and a half centimetres from the top. Then people would start bidding for a piece of church land to let to the poor for a year. The person bidding when the candle burned down enough to let the pin fall became the owner of the land.

In the late 19 century, 19 April was celebrated as Primrose Day in memory of British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli （Lord Beaconsfield）, who died on this day in 1881. People were encouraged to pay tribute to the statesman by wearing primroses as they were supposedly his favourite flower. However, it seems there was a misunderstanding and that the flower was not his favourite after all. Queen Victoria sent a wreath of primroses to Disraeli’s funeral with a note stating that they were “his favourite flowers”; people assumed that the “his” referred to Disraeli, but in fact it referred to Victoria’s late husband, Prince Albert.

St Georges Day — England’s National Day

The 23rd April is St George’s Day. St George is the Patron Saint of England and also of Scouting. It is said that St George once saved a village from great danger. The village were frightened of a fierce dragon who lived close by, so St George killed the dragon.