- 14 Dec, 2025 *
As a little kid, I had an ambivalent relationship to holidays. I grew up in a rural part of a majority Muslim country, in a city of secular people that still clung to the traditions of celebrating Muslim holidays. On the one hand, I enjoyed the gifts and not having school for a while, but I hated the family get-togethers and having to congratulate everyone etc. Especially when the people I was congratulating were ones I only saw on holidays. So it was awkward and felt forced on my end to appear like I had missed them, when I hadn’t. At least, it wasn’t an uneventfu…
- 14 Dec, 2025 *
As a little kid, I had an ambivalent relationship to holidays. I grew up in a rural part of a majority Muslim country, in a city of secular people that still clung to the traditions of celebrating Muslim holidays. On the one hand, I enjoyed the gifts and not having school for a while, but I hated the family get-togethers and having to congratulate everyone etc. Especially when the people I was congratulating were ones I only saw on holidays. So it was awkward and felt forced on my end to appear like I had missed them, when I hadn’t. At least, it wasn’t an uneventful time like holidays are for me in the West. My dad would take me and my brother to our town’s amusement park. Oftentimes, we’d spend most of the day at my maternal grandparents’ house which I loved. If there was anything I enjoyed about holidays, it was spending time with my maternal grandma, baking biscuits in preparation for them, and getting new clothes.
All that vanished when we moved to Europe. We were too poor and disconnected to celebrate. My mom would still bake biscuits with me, but it wasn’t the same. It felt like something we mechanically did for tradition’s sake and not because it brought us joy. We couldn’t afford going to amusement parks nor buying gifts nor going on vacations, so holidays became this thing I dreaded because of how disappointing they were time and again. It certainly didn’t help that I saw the joy in others celebrating their holidays like Christmas which I couldn’t partake in even if I wanted to. My favorite part about the holidays wasn’t so much the holiday itself, but that I could spend a lot of time with my grandma—undisturbed. Her not being around anymore and doing the same with someone else’s grandma would’ve felt equally mechanical to my mom baking biscuits for tradition’s sake. The joy was gone, for good.
To be frank, I never complained about this with the assumption that nobody cared. I didn’t want to seem even more pathetic than I already was. So no one ever invited me to take part in their holiday traditions, and I’m not sure I would’ve had the guts to agree to joining them. I doubt my parents would’ve allowed me to spend the day at someone else’s home on a holiday anyway because it would’ve made them question my choice of not spending the holidays with them, look back critically on past, disappointing holidays and consider what they could do better, making them feel worse about themselves. I don’t blame them. It was a hard time on all of us. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss what I didn’t have.