During Eid here, it’s gossip time. Everyone wears their “new” clothes and everyone else goes, “ewww, look at what she is wearing. HAHA, and look at this guy!”

The thing with Arab families is that they are really huge. I have hundreds of first and second cousins.

No one really appreciates the fact that we’re all just… together. People hold grudges, envy each other, complain to each other, and I can’t remember an Eid celebration without someone ending up in tears!

And all those kids… I don’t know who they are. They just run around and you pull one aside and say, “whose kid are you? Since when did my aunt have a 3rd child?”

December is fake season.. everyone fakes a smile, every family fakes perfection, every couple fakes love. And towards the end of the month, everyone complains how useless the previous year was.

Anyways, I hope someone else has a less cynical view of holiday season. Personally I am not too fond of this time of year.

Haha, I guess it’s pretty much the same in Jewish communities… Israeli or American. I think it’s universal.

Materialism is more apparent in American Jewish holiday scenes. New clothes, gifts. Showing off each other’s children. Family drama.

Israelis are more laid back in general.

Also, holiday time for us is more Passover (April) and Rosh Hashana (September) so now’s not really the time to answer this… Chanukah is fun, but those two times are the real deal.

Do your holidays still have religious significance? Or has it become something about food/family/gifts?

Well, I don’t have family here in Jordan except my parents, and one uncle, most of family immediate as well as distant are all scattered all over the place, so holidays are just having lunch with my parents sort of!

Esra’a –

For me and my community, they are centered around significance. For the outer layers of less religious people in the States, I guess not… There are layers of religiosity, tradition and custom, like any other people I suppose.

Esra’a

Do your holidays still have religious significance? Or has it become something about food/family/gifts?

In Norway it’s about food family and gifts, as you would expect in a country with an 80% atheist majority, where the vast majority of the remaining 20% are non practicing and not very religious. People take time to prepare and eat ham which tastes great, but takes ages to make, where normally one would just whip something up in less than an hour, or eat out/order in.

Christmas here centers more around family for adults, with people flying in from all over, and friends and other acquaintances later, as the first couple of days are reserved for family. I’ll be meeting a lot of old friends, who have scattered about studying different things. There’s no gossiping about clothes or other inanities in my family at least, nor in my circle of friends, just lots of catching up with what other people have been up to in the past year, and will be up to in the coming.

Today I’ve caught up with my cousin who’ll be spending six months living in Tanzania, my uncle who’s living in France, and by phone, my sister who’s studying in Alabama. Tomorrow I’ll be meeting my aunt from Oslo, another cousin who’s now a doctor in some other city (I forget) and a bunch of other people. And there are off course the gifts, highlight of the year for children, who don’t have far of contacts to get back in touch with.

By the 26th children will be back in touch with their friends, plying with their new games and toys, and the rest of us will keep catching up with various branches o the family trough a series of smaller get-togethers, some with full meals, others with only cookies and beverages, because one can only eat so much. Then I’ll catch up with old friends, exchange stories and movie recommendations, and just plain have a good time. Who knows, we might even dig up some old games and do a lan, for old times sakes.

I love Christmas, and I get the impression everyone else does too. Oh we’ll, to each his own, but I think you cynics are missing out.

I love Christmas, and I get the impression everyone else does too. Oh we’ll, to each his own, but I think you cynics are missing out.

I can’t help it if my family is just freakin’ boring compared to yours.

We also don’t celebrate Christmas, we’re not half as festive with our Eids. Maybe for some people here it feels the same, but not to me personally.

I love and appreciate my immediate family very much, as annoying as they are. I love spending time with them, so any celebration that emphasies family time is good enough for me.

But my extended family … I really do think they try extra hard to make me want to suffocate myself with the nearest object each time I have to suffer their presence. “So, what do you study. Oh really? That really sucks. Why can’t you be more like our perfect daughter, she does literature. She’s really good. Why aren’t you dressed as formally? Hey, why are you wasting your life? Why aren’t you studying this instead of that? Do you still pray, are you sure? I doubt you do. 5 times a day? I bet you’re not even Muslim anymore. What do you want to do with your life? Why are you wasting it? You’re useless. Our perfect daughter here is a gem compared to you. You’re a loser. Look at you. Anyways, do you like my hair?”

That’s kind of what I have to deal with. So I don’t know what exactly I am “missing out” on. I couldn’t be happy at this time even if I faked it.

But I’ll say again my immediate family rules… extended one sucks like no other. And the latter is who most of us have to spend time with in Eid.

I am just like Mohammed, my family is scattered all over the place. I moved out of my family’s house this past summer so in Eid I just go there to have lunch with them and that’s about it, there is nothing significantly different. Like Esra’a, I also wish Eid was more festive. Once upon a time, it used to be. But not so much anymore, even the kids get bored out of their skull. It’s different from one family to the other, though. You will still find families who celebrate as best and as openly as they can… probably not most.

Esra’a Wrote:

We also don’t celebrate Christmas, we’re not half as festive with our Eids. Maybe for some people here it feels the same, but not to me personally.

I’ve been meaning to ask, what do you do this time of year, I know you have something, but I’m not sure what it involves. The nature of our Christmas is pretty much known the world over. Also, do you have some other annual celebration that eclipses it?

Esra’a wrote:

That’s kind of what I have to deal with. So I don’t know what exactly I am “missing out” on. I couldn’t be happy at this time even if I faked it.

It sounds like you are missing out on an extended family really, or rather one worth spending time with. What you describe really does sound miserable. On the upside, I think you just made me appreciate mine that much more.

And I bet whatever you’re studying knocks the socks off literature.

Murad (Kuwait) Wrote:

my family is scattered all over the place

Mine is pretty scattered as well, and the circle of friends I grew up with is completely scattered, half of them across the country and, studying abroad being very popular, half of them across the continent and beyond. That’s pretty much what christmas is to me these days, the time of year when everyone simultaneously unscatters, if only for a few weeks. As a kid Christmas was all about the gifts to me, now they barely even register anymore.

Wow, what a window on the world! I live in East Tennessee, a conservative Christian area, sometimes refered to as the ‘Bible Belt”. I knew what Hannakah was, as some of my friends and even relatives celebrate it (my brother married a jewish girl), but I’d never heard of Eid ul Adha, or Yalda before and had no idea they existed or what they meant. Now I wonder at what plan by whom causes all these different events, celebrated by different religions, to take place so closely together….and how it is that we are so simular in our in-family reactions to them. Reading some of these comments actually had me laughing out loud. (my dog thinks I’m nuts, but still adores me).
Like others of you, my family is scattered…..from Hawaii to Michigan, to Mississippi, to Tennessee, to Arizona. I miss some of it and certainly don’t miss some of it. Christmas is supposed to be about Christ’s birth, and that’s what I celebrate.

Nowrooz here is the high holiday, the eve of new year for the persians, it is more a Zarostrian and pure Iranian eve. I guess in Iran, Afganistan, Tajikstan Nowrooz is celebrated. Here in Iran a couple of weeks kids won’t go to school, families party and meet the rest of friends and relatives. It has traditions going with the occasion.
Meeting relatives might not be that pleasing even though they are nice people, because that will be the only time you will see them and the rest of the year are not in touch, so it is not that pleasing to see some one after one year when you don’t feel comfortable with his/her views and comments, which are more or less critisizing. If you met through out the year you would get used to it or feel less intimidated. But perhaps there is a significance in that. We try to be nice to one another and that is hard when you don’t share the same views, politically, religiously, socially, emotionally, but you practice communicating with people who are close enough to critisize you and far enough not to get exposed to the essence of your thoughts, which you cannot intyroduce in two hours time. So, a pracice to take one another the way we are, becuase we are temporarily invited to the party of of life and any moment a person might come to the middle of the party and say, ” Sorry, the party is over”. Meanwhile it is worthwile to enjoy and make it worthwhile

R E Konrad Wrote:

Now I wonder at what plan by whom causes all these different events, celebrated by different religions, to take place so closely together….and how it is that we are so simular in our in-family reactions to them.

The timing is simple, these religions have simply all adopted the winter solstice celebrations found across the northern hemisphere. It is natural for these celebrations to include a feast, as agricultural communities across the hemisphere, at least the ones here in the far north, would take stock of their harvested crop, and slaughter enough livestock to ensure that the remaining animals would be fed until spring. So with the harvest over, and spring a while away, both meat and time were plentiful. Here in Scandinavia daylight and warmth was not, and so people would congregate indoors, and socialize. It is natural that these people would consider the solstice, the end of the suns migration south and the beginning of its migration north, an event worthy of marking, and the widespread practice of sun worship in ancient and prehistoric times lent additional significance to the event.

Our ancient solstice celebration, still called Jul in Norwegian, and called Yule in pre-christian England, lives on only slightly altered. It is what is now known, in English, as Christmas.

I’ve just looked for a summary of ancient solstice celebrations, but most of them keep jabbing at Christianity to the extent that I don’t think you’d enjoy them. This one is fairly benign, and if you just skip the first minute, and quit watching at 5:25, you’re home free. Besides, the jabs included then are mere out of context references, you won’t really understand them unless you know beforehand what they’re getting at. The stuff in between barely touches upon Christianity. The reference, by church fathers, to Jesus being born in a cave, quoted at 2:40 stems form beliefs and scriptures present in ancient Greece, which didn’t make the cut when the catholic church later compiled the first bible.

As for the origins of Christmas traditions, I managed to find an account made from a Christian perspective. (I’m good) It*s made by Christian puritans, and so is to be regarded as propaganda against Christmas, so any commentary on the nature of medieval Christmas celebrations, as well as the pagan festivals from which they are derived are to be taken with a boatload of salt. They do a pretty good job of accounting for the origins of Christmas traditions though, and they don’t bash or incriminate Christianity while doing so. (yay)

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How come

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That’s never happened before. Did I trigger some sort of filter? What words do I need to avoid?

Well, first, as someone of German descent, I can attest to the fact that if you get a bunch of related Germans together for any period of time loud arguments will break out . We aren’t particularly religious people, but this is our Christmas: Christmas Eve has several stages: Traditional? Swedish smorgasboard, consisting of meatballs, mashed poatoes, pickled fish, pickles, cucumber salad, spinach dip in pumpernickel bread, (I have added sweet red cabbage with apples, and a meat and cheese plate) coffee, tea, and a variety of homemade cookies. It is presented at sunset, and everyone who comes to the door is welcomed and offered food. At 9:00, all of the guests gather who are not staying till morning and exchange gifts, and we all get a pick of the “Christmas Pie”, a huge basket of small token gifts, all wrapped, (trading is allowed if Grandma doesn’t catch you). We sing Christmas carols till midnight, when each child is allowed 1 present to welcome Christmas day. Then we get whatever sleep we can until the kids (mostly the Grandma age ones) wake us up at the crack of dawn. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate are made, and everyone starts with stockings (full of small stuff like chocolate, tangerines, and small fun gifts) then one of the children starts handing out what gifts are there to everyone. Breakfast is a kind of quiche with bacon, eggs, lingonberries and fruit, all baked in a crust, and then everyone relaxes for a few hours, cleans up, and, weather permitting, goes skating, tobogganing, skiing, or, if we are at my sisters, horse drawn sleigh. Dinner is lighter, usually turkey or chicken, with more salad and fruit, and we settle in to watch TV, play with the kids, or catch up over some hot cider, or hot buttered rum (my personal favourite). Boxing day is usually for cleaning up, spending Christmas money (if I can be prodded off the couch) and wishing everyone well for the New Year if they are leaving. We don’t celebrate at the same house every year necessarily, but as many of the family tries to get together as possible.

Just another day… annoying and irritating day where people pretend to care when they don’t.

HI, I was born in Germany and grew up here. So I am a german muslim girl with turkish roots.
I always celebrated the islamic feasts in Germany and it was always the same routine:
We put our new clothes on, my sisters and brother, who already got married, visit my parents with all their children and we started to eat, eat, eat… as if the slogan of these feasts were: EAT as much as you can;)
It was always boring for me;
but once when I started to study in a different city and I could not attend my family, i understood that it is wonderful to have all these relatives and these feasts and I just thank god that he gave me the possibility to have a family, to see them, to love such nice people…(they are like your relatives: very nice, very complicated,…)
That’s why I always go home and see my family at these days and eat, eat, eat;) and just join these moments…
Thanks god for this chance and this family…

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