Make Holiday Cheer, not Holiday Wars!

by Mohja Kahf

As a Muslim, I can get behind Christmas, if I think of it as a remembrance of Sayyidna ‘Esa (“Our Master Jesus”), peace be upon him, and his mother Sitna Maryam (“Our Lady Mary”), peace be upon her. The birth of Esa, who spoke wisdom even as a babe in his mother’s arms, as the Quran says (Maryam, 19:29-33) is a source of joy and wonder for us too. I can even appreciate the historical St. Nicholas—not the fat Coca Cola icon hanging around Macy’s, but the fourth-century Turkish bishop—a thin, sad-faced cleric who embodied charity for the needy, concern for poor children (redeeming them from the Roman slave market), and quiet intervention against the sexual slavery of women, practiced out of poverty in his Christian land. All of what the original St. Nicholas stood for, his Trinitarian creed aside, are Islamic values too.

Unlike Easter, where there are sharp Islamic differences with the crucifixion theology the holiday celebrates, there’s little for a Muslim to object to theologically in the spiritual side of Christmas—even if there is much to object to in the materialistic gluttony with which the holiday has come to be practiced in global capitalism. Many Western Christians forget that long before imperialist invasions and triumphalist missionaries, Yeshu’ (Esa) and Mary were ours too, baby. Minus the part about Jesus being God, of course. The miraculous virgin birth, the holy uniqueness of this particular mother and son, we share reverence for that, even if the Quran has a different, and far more Mary-centered, account of the Messiah’s delivery. (And yes, I know December 25th wasn’t really Christ’s birthday, but it’s traditional to commemorate it on that day.)

I even like public crèches. What I don’t get is how the nativity displays are seen by many American Christians as symbols of what separates them from Muslims, instead of what we share with them. It’s odd and ironic that many US Christians put up these very middle easterny-looking figurines, with hijabs and camels and Arab male headgear and such, and then look askance at actual middle easterners who dress and look the same way today.

In Jordan, where there is a 12% Arab Christian population and many magnificent churches in the Orthodox rite, stores sell mosque-shaped Christmas tree ornaments, bought by those Jordanian Muslims who put up trees in celebration of Christmas. The ornaments are also popular with Jordanian Christians and with interfaith families. I love the interfaith syncretism of that, even though it’s not a custom in my family to do the tree thing.  (A Jewish colleague made me laugh this Christmas eve when she blurted, “A Hannukah bush—the very phrase is just, well, kinky!” – but this isn’t the Sex & the Ummah column, so I won’t go there.)

And may I gently add, interfaith holiday recognition goes both ways. I rarely ever get Eid cards from People of the Book, Christians and Jews, except from one rabbi friend.

While I wish “merry Christmas” to my friends who are Christian, and send Hannukah cards to Jewish friends, I steer my kids away from “What is Santa bringing you?” conversations during their vulnerable early years in US public schools, and our celebrations at home are richly Muslim. We had a Hajj-themed party for Eid al-Adha this year.  My kids made a 3-D model of the Ka’ba and each guest got to go on “Tawaf” by sticking their name on a toothpick around the black-construction-paper cube.  Kiddies made glitter-Ka’bas as a craft activity, while teens watched the Hajj scene from Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, and grown-ups poured themselves (halal!) beverages at the “Zamzam Table” and socialized under paper-chain decorations of Ka’bas strung on gold tinsel. More importantly, I clicked an online donation to sacrifice an animal for the poor, which is what the “sacrifice” part of this Sacrifice Holiday is about (and, if Brigitte Bardot with her anti-udhiya campaign is listening, it’s a highly ecological, humane, and moral Muslim ritual, our animal sacrifice, with every bit of meat put to use).

Family customs can evolve.  My middle child decided we must celebrate Kwanzaa this year. “But do we have a claim to it?” I asked the Kwanzaa advocate. I’m not as eclectic as you may think; I do need to feel an authentic connection before I celebrate an occasion. Otherwse, I’m perfectly happy watching you celebrate your holiday, without making it mine.  My kid reminds me that I am one-sixteenth Algerian and so YES, I too am African, I can do Kwanzaa!  And how could I forget, anyway, that Muslims are all symbolically descended from Hajar, a black woman of Africa, who is buried in the heart of Islam, next to the Ka’ba? So I say to Black nationalists such as Dr. Maulana Karenga, who invented Kwanzaa: “Don’t you go anti-Arab on me; we in this too.” We are scurrying to find seven candles in the house for a last-minute start to tomorrow’s first day of Kwanzaa, what with stores being closed for Christmas day. 

Plus, I’m getting into the Shia holidays, based on an epiphany of “Ich Bin Eine Shia!” I had while reading Moojan Momen’s Introduction to Shiism this summer at the Muslim Public Service Network in DC, where I served as scholar-in-residence for a week.  So I’m making the family mourn Ashura this year, man. A Shia friend thinks I’m nuts, and relates traumatized anecdotes of growing up Shia to prove it: Once, she got scolded for chewing gum on Ashura. “Yazid chews gum on Ashura!” her shocked grannie said. You can’t do anything happy on Ashura, obviously, since you’re remembering the Prophet’s grandson and all his kin being gruesomely massacred by Yazid. Not sure how to commemorate such a tragedy with the kids, but we’ll think of something. Who knows, self-flagellation might turn out to be fun.

Also, I’m rediscovering my grandmother’s north Syrian roots this spring and reinstituting the celebration of Nowruz that she used to do as a girl in Aleppo. Picnic at the town Botanical Gardens! We’re going to share that holiday with our local Azerbaijani-Iranian Shia friends, who seem to think Nowruz is this exclusively Shia thing—hey you guys, it’s not just yours!

Then there’s solstice. I feel connected to that one simply on a visceral, physical level—I hate the long nights, I sink into what may be borderline Seasonal Affective Disorder feelings from the short winter days, so I could totally go for Shabe Yalda, the Iranian holiday celebrating the birth of light after the December 21st solstice.  “Yalda” comes from an Aramaic root from which the Arabic word for birth, “milad, yaledu” also stems, so there’s already syncretism in the name of the holiday, which seems to combine Syriac Christian, Zoroastrian, and ancient nature religion elements. 

Purists in every faith may wince at cross-religious blending. Listen, wherever practicing another religion’s holiday actually violates a theology of your own, by all means, make distinctions. I’m not saying make everything a big mush. I’m just pointing out a few places where our holiday beliefs do intersect—let’s at least enjoy those!

So, I wish you principled joy, folks, and heightened consciousness, and overlapping blessings, for the season and beyond.  Merry Hajj! Christmas mubarak! Kwanzaa sa’eed! Hannukah kareem! Solstice bi-khair, and a sunny, not-just-Iranian Shabe Yalda to you!