An elegantly wrapped gift box, decorated with colourful ribbons is gifted to you by your friends despite the fact that there is no special occasion. They have given it to you with a lot of love. They also stick a note of instruction that says you shouldn’t open it in front of them.

Delightedly, you take this present home, unwrap it in front of your siblings but your smile fades away when you see what is in it — there is no gift, instead all you find inside are small pebbles! Feeling enraged, you are just about to throw the gift when your eyes fall on a note attached to the bottom of the box. One line sums up this whole scene: “Happy April Fools’ Day!”

Yes! April Fools’ Day is celebrated all over the world on April 1, at times also known as, ‘All Fools’ Day’. On this particular day, people play pranks and dupe their friends, family members, work associates or even neighbours. Practical jokes performed on this day can be simple like your shoe laces are untied or tell your friend that the class will start one hour late or stick the note ‘I am a fool’ on the back of your friend.

When exactly this trend of playing pranks on April 1 started is uncertain; some believe that it is celebrated due to the change of season whereas others believe that it originated after the new Gregorian calendar as adopted. Up until the 16th century, the accepted calendar was Julian calendar according to which New Year was celebrated around April. But later in France it was declared that the New Year would be celebrated on January 1, with respect to Gregorian calendar. But there were some people who did not accept the change whereas some were unaware due to poor means of communication in those times.

Moreover, April Fools’ Day is also celebrated at the same time that the two other festivities are celebrated. In ancient Rome, the festival of Hilaria was commemorated around this time. Hilaria stands for hilarity and hilarious, which mean great merriment. Today, Hilaria is also known as ‘Roman Laughing Day’. In India, the Holi festival celebrates the arrival of spring. As a part of that festival, people play jokes and smear colours on each other.

It is a day of rejoice and fun in many countries; they celebrated according to their traditions. However, in Pakistan, there are two different factions; those who enjoy this day while other ones are not interested at all.

According to Eilaf Faizi, student of Mass Communication at Jinnah University for Women (JUW), people need to have tolerance to accept people playing practical jokes on them. She recounts that when she was in Canada, not only students used to play pranks, even teachers fooled their students. For instance once a teacher announced in class that the whole class had failed in a test, everyone was disheartened. But the teacher soon said: “Happy April Fools’ Day to all of you!”

However, until and unless the joke is harmless and does not offend anyone, it is fine to go on with it.

Hafsah Ghazal, student at JUW chuckles while sharing the experience of her school times when she and her friends also played pranks. Once, she recalls, her friends removed the cream from a sandwich biscuit and put toothpaste in it instead.

On the other hand, Sadaf Younus — a second year student of pharmacy at University of Karachi — shares her experience where she suffered the brunt of her harmless prank. Younus told her mother that her maternal aunt had broken her leg in an accident. When Younus’ mother got to know the truth, she was rebuked.

Whereas there are some people who are not in support of celebrating this day in any way. Syed Asif Ali is one of them. He opines, “It is a waste of time and energy to commemorate a day which is not associated with our culture.” He also says that a few years ago there was not much hype about the observance of different days in our country but now media hasexaggerated everything.

Having said that, to have or not to have fun is entirely up to you. But as it is said that what is a joke to one person is a cruel jibe to another, so do make sure that what you do doesn’t hurt the feelings of others when you play a joke on someone, and if you do hurt someone, apologise.

On the other hand, you should also be ready to be at the receiving end of a joke if you have played one and do remember to take it in the right spirit.