Dear All,

Eid Mubarak. And hopefully this year some of us will find this an enjoyable occasion -- rather than an exhausting and tedious one.

Of course meethi eid should be neither exhausting nor tedious, after all it comes after a month of fasting and restraint, and it should feel like a true celebration.

It should, but somehow the excessive consumerism of modern life has completely eroded the pleasure and excitement of Eid day.

Easy lines of credit along with the increasingly materialistic values of this day and age have made us a compulsively acquisitive society. We spend the whole year first craving and then acquiring things. And because we are so addicted to material acquisition, Ramzan becomes a mere run-up to more excess.

It seems to me that Eid has been quite destroyed by our spending habit and the prevalent mode of splurging on all manner of things. In my childhood one reason Eid was so special was because not only did we get lovely new clothes but we got to buy new shoes for the occasion. Going to buy our Eid shoes was a big event as this was the only other time, apart from buying school shoes, when we actually got new shoes. School shoes were (mostly) black and practical, but Eid shoes could be fancy, glitzy and exciting.

And getting ready on Eid day was thrilling: new clothes, new shoes, and the anticipation of food that was particular to the occasion, a treat.

But what happens now is that individuals are acquiring clothes and shoes all year round so Eid shopping is no longer special. And the food is no longer such a treat because all year round people are trying to outdo each other with wedding extravaganzas that feature the sort of rich and elaborate food that once was considered rare and special. We go through the motions but we have forgotten the essential pleasure of the Eid celebration because of our devotion to consumerism.

Eidee, the giving of eid money to family and friends, is another tradition that has suffered massively because of consumerism and a strange sociological pathology of trying to outdo others in terms of the eidee rate. People do not realise that by giving excessive amounts of eidee they in fact destroy the participatory nature of the day. The whole fun of giving and receiving eidee is petering out because many people simply cannot afford to give at the inflated ‘rate’ set by egotistical and ostentatious individuals.

For children, part of the thrill of eidee is that so many people give you these smallish amounts of money that it adds up to a good sum. In addition to this, the eidee circulates, as another aspect of the whole protocol is that youngsters give younger children eidee too.

Thus the occasion is as much about giving as it is about receiving.

Traditionally, giving eidee also cut across class lines: it would not be just about employers giving employees eidee, often the domestic servants in a household (particularly the more senior ones) would also give the children of the household eidee in their capacity as elders (rather than social ‘inferiors’).

Then there is the modern-day trend towards small Eid gatherings rather than the big family events which can bring together people of disparate temperaments, varied socio-economic levels and different age groups. This trend negates the spirit of the day -- after all you can host small meals in your picture-perfect interiors at other times of the year, but surely Eid needs to be a participatory event? Eid needs to be an event to which all families contribute and which all ages attend.

Best wishes