Carnival

I don’t know about the other countries, but in Portugal there is a sentence often used in Carnival that says something like: Since it is Carnival nothing can be taken serious, meaning you can trick the others in any possible manner. This would be armless if it wasn’t for the fact that some abuse on it! Like, can we take non-seriously that someone gives us an electric shock with a “pen” and then starts laughing and says “It is Carnival, ahah, it was funny wasn’t it?”