that awkward muslim moment during the holidays
What do the holidays mean to me?
The answer is simple: *family*
Yes we are Muslim, and yes we don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa like everyone else at this time. But we do celebrate family, and as spread apart across the country as we are, the Qureshi’s are tightly knit. We rarely get to see each other, and so the time off that we receive from our schools and jobs is extremely valuable to us. Even if we’re just sitting and watching TV in silence, at least we’re doing it together. There’s something so wholesome about just sitting in the living room on your phone in the presence of your siblings doing absolutely nothing. A millennial concept really.
But in actuality, the holidays are about coming together, and really it can mean anything you want it to mean to you. As Muslims, it’s so easy to feel like an outcast during this season. Starting November 1st, we are completely thrown into the Winter Wonderland of marketing with every commercial, website, and coffee shop we step into. We literally can’t avoid the images of Santa, reindeer, and elves even if we tried to. But honestly, that’s okay. Yes it’s all a clever capitalistic strategy to disguise the season of spending as “giving.” And literally make us feel the urge to empty our wallets the minute the weather gets colder and days get shorter. But hey, you can’t deny that you are also indulging in the crazy good deals and the “peppermint mochas by the fireplace aesthetics.”
Does it make you any less of a Muslim to give a gift in this festive environment? Not really. I mean, is your imaan that weak to doubt your deen or another Muslim’s when they hang up a Christmas tree? I hope not.
Because one of the biggest values we learn as Muslims is intention. That’s undeniable. Your actions aren’t always necessarily aligned with your intentions, and that’s just a matter of circumstance. But the point here is not to justify Muslims putting up a Christmas tree, it’s to emphasize that everyone has their own intentions. Honestly, the activity is really just a wholesome gathering to decorate a living (or once living) tree in your home as a present symbol of your own unique family. I genuinely could not care less if you erect a tree in your home. If so that’s beautiful, and if not, that’s great too. I’m sure whatever you’re doing, your intentions are honest and your own. I believe that as Muslims, we literally have far more pressing issues to spend our energy upon, and the people that act like a Christmas tree is the end to one’s imaan are just bored and naive to what really matters.
But we also don’t really have much of those symbolic gestures in Islam either. Yes we have Ramadan, and two major Eid’s, but they’re only emphasized for short periods of time and the season in which they occur changes every year. It’s not consistent and therefore it’s really hard to capitalize on Eid and mass market it. We don’t have Eid carols, movies, or decorations; and that’s not saying that we have to, it just means that we miss the opportunity to create a world-wide streamlined global holiday in the same way that Christmas has become. Consequently, some Muslims feel that they are “missing out” on a unified celebration. We give Eidi after prayer, and that’s basically it. A tradition that’s been dying out here the more that middle-class families struggle to make ends meet.
On the other hand, we do perform ritualistic sacrifice in the name of Allah (swt) during Eid-ul-Adha and as Muslims we know the honest and genuine intentions behind this tradition. But I have seen too many times where images of Eid-ul-Adha are misinterpreted and used to demonize Muslims in the media. As millennials, we’re living in an entirely new society with entirely new expectations, while practicing older customs with honest intentions.
So in an ideal world, we could all suddenly create new traditions for Eid that wouldn’t be scrutinize, but that’s pretty difficult to do. What we can do for now is interpret current existing traditions and translate them in terms that are meaningful for our own intentions. And also normalize the current traditions that we have. We as an ummah need to come together and fight battles that attack our ummah as a whole, because picking apart at each other only makes us weaker, and that is exactly what those who stand against us want. That is their intention.
Share your thoughts below!
- eęsu
too much rose gold
My sister’s very extra and unnecessarily rose gold themed holiday tree. It was our first time decorating a tree together, and soon after we returned all the decorations and redocarated it with less pink. A lot of work, but the most important thing is that we enjoyed our time together.