Holiday Cheer

In the spirit of the commencement of the [December] holiday season I would like to recap a special moment that I experienced this past weekend.

On Saturday morning I awoke bright and early at 8 am to make breakfast—American style. One of the other girls on the trip, Cath, and I made French toast and coffee for our roommates (who are best friends). It was a total hit and not too difficult to make with a few pots and our hot plates (think camp-stove cooking and that is the extent of the type of food I can make myself over here). As it was the first of December, Cath and I felt in the mood to start a little Christmas spirit; we decided to make paper snowflake decorations! After gathering the necessary supplies, I started cutting up the paper and showed my roommate, Mbéré how to do it. She thought it was absolutely great and so to add on, I turned on some Christmas tunes. We spent the rest of the morning cutting out snowflakes and taping them up on the walls, and singing along to the music. As I was leaving for lunch, a few of Mbéré’s friends stopped by to say hi. I explained to them that in the US most Christian houses decorate for Christmas, hence the stocking I have hung up on a wall and a little sparkly Christmas tree on my desk (thanks to a holiday package from Aunt Laura!). The snowflakes were something that usually just little kids make, but when in need of decorations, is an easy enough thing to do. I told my roommate to show them how to make the decorations as well, since they seemed to like the idea of Christmas spirit despite the fact that they are Muslim. Five hours later I finally returned home. As I walked in the door I saw all of the same girls in our room only low-and-behold our entire room was strung with paper garlands, snowflakes covered a wall, and the little mini present ornaments that my Aunt had sent me were hanging from each of the garland strands lending a completely Christmas feel to our room! So cliché I know, but my breath was taken away at that moment as I burst into a huge smile and all the girls started a ruckus in response to my pleasure. They had come up with the idea of decorating for me because of how enthusiastic I had been when I was talking about how Christmas becomes a celebration throughout the month, and not just on the 25th. I was so touched by this gesture of making me feel more at home here, where it is still 85-90 degrees and most people gear up for Tabaski, instead of Christmas. Reflecting on their kindness I relate it to the tolerance and sharing the two religions share here. It is warming to see inter-religious exchange; both sides take part in each other’s holidays and people are usually pretty open to the practices of each religion.