According to the calendar hanging in my cubicle at work, Friday is the day that Ramadan begins. Also The Dark Knight Rises comes out in theaters, and I jokingly suggested to a friend that we use our Muslim neighbors’* holiday as an excuse to go to a midnight showing. Since he is a little more responsible than me and prefers to be conscious for work on Friday he declined, and after I realized that the showings are already sold out and confessed my plan to my wife I decided (she decided) that I had better things to do.
However, it did get me thinking. I have absolutely no idea what Ramadan is. I remember something on the news when I was in high school about us bombing Iraq during Ramadan, and that it requires fasting for a month. Pretty skimpy information, and the only reason I remember that much is that I thought it was dumb of us to bomb them when they were already punishing themselves by fasting. Starving and I have a poor history of getting along.
So I turned to the greatest source of unbiased and accurate information on other cultures, the Internet! (For those of you without internal sarcasm monitors, if I end a printed sentence with an exclamation point, that’s usually a good indication that sarcasm is creeping around that statement somewhere.) Apparently fasting during Ramadan is meant only during daytime, with two meals being eaten each day, one before dawn and one after dusk. The family also gathers and eats their evening meal together, as the purpose of the holiday is to achieve a closer family relationship.
Now I don’t have any intention of fully celebrating Ramadan, largely because with my limited, Wikipedia enforced understanding I probably wouldn’t do it justice, and also because I do not relish the fact of cutting out a meal everyday, particularly the one that makes my stomach stop rumbling halfway thought my work day. But I do want to understand better and maybe observe one or two parts of the holiday because I’m weird like that. Another friend of mine and I have observed Passover in the past, cooking a traditional dinner (to the best of our very limited abilities) and observing some traditions with the intention of learning more about the holiday. The end result probably looked nothing like a Jewish Passover, but it ended up being a lot of fun, and his family earned a new appreciation for the taste of lamb and horseradish.
I’m not sure what part of Ramadan I will observe, but the little I read indicated there is a celebration at the end of the month that involves food and family and giving thanks. I’m familiar with similar celebrations; since I do gravitate towards any celebration with food, and with a little more research I think I will probably see if my little is interested in a traditional Muslim meal and party. It probably would pass as a real Ramadan celebration for anyone, but I’ll learn something and have fun, which is about all I am striving to achieve in life anyway. Let me know if you are interested in learning a little and having some fun with me.
*to my knowledge, I do not actually have any Muslim neighbors. If you do, they can probably tell you more about what Batman and Ramadan have in common than I can. I’m sure there’s something.
