Added to the ever growing list of mild annoyance of the things that this pandemic has ruined this year is the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. Like Ramadan, this Eid al-Fitr was my first time experiencing this celebration and even thought COVID-19 hindered this too, I am here to write about the one I got on sale.
First of all, I came to realize that every human celebration ever is basically an excuse to stuff our faces with food and not feel overly guilty about it. Of course bonus indulgence points if we are not the ones cooking the food. My first thought seeing the jars of cookies placed in careful order in the living room table was «That looks like Christmas», which was followed by my friend’s remark that it looks like Holi too. They even had a type of sweet called «Putri Salju», which looks a lot and tastes similar to a sweet we have in Greece for Christmas called «Kourabies».
The feast, like everything here, starts early in the first day of celebration. Before I had the chance to sleep, I was called out my room, to have breakfast. Of course breakfast, lunch and dinner were the same and they were always accompanied with a generous portion of white rice. The savory food was not a lot to my taste -too much coconut milk and unidentified meat chunks- but the sweets…oh the sweets. Many biscuits to eat like there is no tomorrow, with one being the Queen of them all, Nastar. Nastar is a pineapple tart and when homemade, it is delicious. So delicious in fact that I am pretty sure I ate half of the bowl on my own.
Of course celebrations always have the downside of having to socialize. That might not be a drawback, if you are indeed social, but when you throw me in a room full of people I don’t know, I just stand in the corner, eating whatever I can find to keep myself busy, while praying for this to be over soon. The other common affairs that follow such celebrations in Greece, like music, are not really present, at least to my experience. I, honestly, found the whole thing rather dull, after I was done with eating, which to be fair it is the best part in any case. There was nothing much to keep us entertained except for long drawn small talks, with the occasional board game. I also found peculiar that people don’t eat all together, but each one, whenever they want, take their plate, fill it with food found in the open skillets placed in the kitchen table and eat without any coordination or team spirit. Oh, there is also praying, but this is an activity I will not be participating in, any time soon.
Generally, although not a full experience given the circumstances, Eid al-Fitr was not my cup of tea, as I was mostly bored. I have to say, however, that food was great and I often got the feeling of Christmas at these days. So maybe the issues was not the celebration itself, but the fact that it is difficult to properly celebrate, when you are not with the ones you want to.
The Indonesian Chronicles 