Being Muslim at Christmas means enjoying all the festivity without the stress
Zarqa Nawaz | CBC News | Posted: December 20, 2018 11:00 AM | Last Updated: December 13, 2019
'It's like being a grandparent and enjoying the baby but giving it back when it gets too colicky'
This piece was originally published Dec. 20, 2018.
I love Christmas. I love the music, I love the malls, I love the treats at work.
I love it because I don't celebrate it. I am Muslim.
I get to enjoy the shiny, twinkly, festive parts of Christmas and avoid the ones that cause stress, like getting stuck in lines to buy too many gifts and hosting parties with unhappy relatives. It's like being a grandparent and enjoying the baby but giving it back when it gets too colicky.
My kids love it, too.
"Everyone seems so happy," said my daughter Inaya. "And we get to have holidays."
Christmas = stability
Muslims also have religious holidays — the two Eids — but they are currently in the summer.
Because we follow a lunar calendar, the date for those holidays moves up by roughly 10 days every year. And because some Muslims prefer to sight the new moon, we literally don't know what day the holiday falls on until the night before.
I love Christmas because I know the date. It doesn't change. No one is fighting in a mosque about how we discovered algebra and the banana but can't agree on how to sight the new moon. It's only been 1,400 years of Muslims having the same debate.
Christmas is a stable part of my life.
The worst part of it is gaining weight from all the snacks that I'm eating.
Ramadan is more about staying alive than celebrating
With the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, you have the opposite problem. This celebration requires a lot of rigour before we're allowed to enjoy it.
Ramadan involves fasting from dawn until sunset. That means 19 hours of fasting if the holiday falls during the summer. We are supposed to develop spiritual resilience.
Spiritually, it's probably good for us, but if you meet a Muslim during this time, they are not joyous, friendly or glad to be alive. They are just trying to stay alive.
I have to make Eid al-Fitr, the day when Ramadan ends, extra special. I cannot phone it in. My children want a celebration to which they can invite all their friends to our home. I've had to raise a tent in our backyard to be able to fit everyone.
And make samosas: 500 of them.
At least this year Ramadan isn't in December. When it was, having stressed out Jews, Muslims and Christians fighting it out in the grocery store to make matzah balls and baklava and sugar cookies isn't a pretty thing.
My children will enjoy Christmas without presents only because they know their holiday is coming and it better be good or else they'll convert.
I'll get my stress in June, but for now, I'm living vicariously through someone else's holiday.