I’d say, the Eid-Al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan is equivalent on scale to Christmas and the Hindu celebration of Diwali.
Ramadan is all about charity, sharing, reaching out to the less fortunate and thanking God for what you have. Eid-Al-Fitr marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and is mainly a family celebration. This particular Eid sees the largest migration as 1.2 billion Muslims around the world make plans to be with the family. According to the Gulf News: 14.8 million in Indonesia were expected to head to their homes and 1.2 million cars in Malaysia were expected to hit the nations biggest highway.
Generally Eid-Al-Fitr is celebrated by an early morning prayer, a special meal with home-baked sweets for desert; they wear new clothes and in some countries ‘Eidi’ (money for Eid) is given to the children.
Now, having said that, what I saw for Eid celebrations in Madrid were slightly different. I went to a Ramadan/Eid tent where Sudanese music artist Rasha rocked the crowd with tunes in Arabic to afro-reggae-jazz-Arabic music; free Arabic tea and sweets were served and you could hear the odd person saying ‘Eid Mubarak’.
However more than the Eid spirit, was the amount of alcoholic ‘spirit’ I could see around me. People brought in liters of beer and calimochos (red-wine and cola), and were smoking pot in same tent along with their Muslim friends who were celebrating the end of their fasting for the religious festival. Having lived in a Muslim country for a significant period of life (alcohol is forbidden in Islam), I found this rather sacrilegious but I suppose inevitable at the same time.
Should bringing alcohol into a Ramadan tent have been forbidden? How can you experience the different cultures of a multi-cultural society without insulting the tradition and hurting democracy at the same time?