Eid Mubarak!

I recently wrote this home ot my family, and decided to share it here aswell! I was comparing Eid to Christmas:


They do celebrate christmas here, although its not official. Oddly enough the founder of the nation Quaid-e -Azzam Ali Jinnah's birthday falls on the 25th of december, so its a holiday.
There is a fairly strong christian/catholic community here, and many people partake in the festivities.

Eid just passed, which to me was like Christmas.
Muslims here go by the lunar calendar. So at the break of the October moon being spotted, everyone begins to fast during daylight hours. It was a lil tough at times because everything was closed during the day... :p But thats not what made it really special. Every night at Iftar, around 6:15pm (everynight it changed by about :30 seconds) the community would get together and everyone would eat together. Families would all be together, people giving food to the poor. Its those moments that are special when you see everyone together, reminded me of family dinners, sept they would do it every night to break their fast. The nights were filled with lights, and shops are open really late (since they are closed during the day, they need to make their money somehow). The the night of Chaand Raat (Moon light) comes, it signals the end of Ramadan and the begining of a 3 day celebration, where ppl no longer fast and instead they eat and eat and eat like 4 or 5 times a day!

I was lucky enough to be invited by a friend to his house for Eid, where we met his family, and family friends, laughed and joked and.. ATE! We even collected what is called Eidi (Eid Bonus) a small token of money that the elders give to the youth. The youth here run around afterwards gloating about who got the most Eidi.

All in all it was a great experience, but made me miss home!