Publishing deadlines meant we missed the chance to attempt any April Fool’s hoaxes on our readers this year.

Not that we’d have been able to top our 2019 effort, when our paper switched from its old broadsheet format to its current, more convenient tabloid size.

That week, we proudly unveiled a “pioneering” new circular design, which then-Herald editor Colin Channon explained: “Families can sit around the table reading bits of the paper, and then turn it around as they finish the story. We think it could revolutionise the way people read newspapers.”

Some readers fell for Colin’s brilliant ruse, just as many undoubtedly did with other April Fool’s tricks this year. But where did this peculiar tradition originate?

A keen investigator of the topic was The Weekly Herald and Advertiser For Farnham and District newspaper, which on April 4, 1896, explored the mystery in an article titled ‘The Festival of All Fools’.

“The origin of April fooling is one of those obscure questions which delight the antiquarian mind by offering a perfectly free field to conjecture,” our correspondent wrote.

Some, he noted, were particularly fond of elaborate theories: “People with an inclination to ingenious trifling have revelled in far-fetched guesses about it.”

He stated that, as with several unwelcome traditions, it could be our Gallic cousins who started it.

“The simplest explanation suggests that the custom was borrowed from France, on the grounds that it occurs earlier in French literature than our own.”

That said, the French were quick to argue that poisson d’Avril , as it’s known in France, had an English origin: “Which, as England is the country of fools and fishes, must seem perfectly reasonable.”

Another theory suggests an ancient Celtic origin—but the writer is again sceptical.

“When you are in doubt about the origins of a thing, put it down to an ancient Celtic custom. Who is to disprove it?”

However, he is more receptive to an Indian connection: “The Hindoos [sic] have an annual religious festival, called Huli [sic], which terminates on March 31, and is celebrated on that day by exactly the identical game of sending people on ‘pure purposeless parade’ in order to enjoy their chagrin and discomfort.”

Still, he notes that attributing the custom to the Orient is often a way of dodging further investigation: “By obscuring its origins to the Far East, it is felt that the subject need not be enquired into more, whether they be songs, scents or scourges.”

The writer then goes on to note that the first recorded instance of April fooling in England appears in Jonathan Swift’s posthumously published collection of letters A Journal to Stella.

In 1713, Swift played a macabre practical joke on Arbuthnot and Lady Masham, convincing them that a man hanged the previous day had miraculously come back to life and could be seen at a local tavern.

Unfortunately for Swift, his friends were too sharp to be duped: “Forewarned is forearmed; no one was taken in, and the joke died at its birth.”

As the writer dryly observes: “The fact is very interesting, as showing what a remarkably bad joke may be perpetrated by a great wit.”

A warning against taking pranks too far comes from Robert Chambers’ collection of trivia, Chambers' Book of Days, which recounts the story of a young Frenchwoman who stole a friend’s watch.

When caught, she coolly protested: “I was only making an April Fool of my friend.”

The magistrate, however, was less amused and sentenced her to prison “until the following 1st of April – only as an April Fool’s joke.”

By the late 19th century, our 1896 writer was relieved to report that April Fool’s Day pranks were falling out of fashion: “Is it that life is felt to be too serious for such follies, or merely that living is too much of a hoax all the year round?”

He added: “April fooling appears to be on the decline except among children”— and, indeed, newspaper editors.