The dark history behind why the chicken actually crossed the road

It all makes sense, unfortunately

Photo: Robin Loznak photography

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!

This is one of the oldest jokes around, and also one of the first jokes I was told as a kid. I wouldn’t be surprised if most people reading this also recall it as one of the first hours they remember being told. It’s almost a rite of passage; who hasn’t heard why the chicken crossed the road?

When I first heard it, I didn’t understand why it was funny. But as the years went on I began to understand (or I thought I began to understand) what the intended humour was. The chicken must have crossed the road for an important reason, but such a bland punch line shows you were overthinking it the whole time! Haha! Joke’s on you!

Well, not quite.

A look back through history

If we look back into the annals of history, we find the earliest known printed version of the joke goes way back to 1847, in a New York magazine called Knickerbocker.

Photo: Wikipedia

And here in lies the clue as to the origins of the joke, and why it is so much darker than anyone thinks.

In the 1800s, and even now to this day, a chicken was a slang term for someone who was cowardly.

There was also a crime that was considered extremely cowardly; one that was looked upon with disgust and shame for the perpetrator (in total contrast to how we view this ‘crime’ today, which is often with compassion).

It’s suicide.

The joke was made up to shame those who attempted suicide.

A New View

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side.

At this point, you may be having what I would call a “holy shit!” moment. All those years we thought we knew what the joke was about, and now the penny has dropped.

For anyone who hasn’t put the pieces together yet, let me explain.

A chicken is a slang term for a coward. Those who took their own lives used to be looked upon as cowards. So why would someone who wanted to end their own life cross a road? To die in the passing traffic and transition to ‘the other side’, aka ‘the afterlife’.

All these years we’ve been reciting what we thought was a lame joke when in fact it was dark take on a callous view of those who desperately needed help.

The one positive thing to have come from this joke is that when the true meaning was lost over time, so was the humour that it delivered. A number of variations started circulating that made fun of the joke itself (Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide! Why did the chewing gum cross the road? It was stuck on the chicken’s foot!).

So there we have it. A dark history of what’s probably the most well-known joke in the world, that eventually lost its meaning and spawned thousands of variations that brought back a better class of humour.

Please, just don’t tell it to your kids.