Catherine Cartwright

Ramadan is a month when Muslims pray, fast, go without water, abstain from fleshly and social pleasures, reflect, and concentrate on their spiritual life. This period is similar to the Christian tradition of Lent, preceding Easter. A person may atone for sins by observing the Ramadan fast, as Christians absolve their sins by keeping the Lenten fast.

All Muslims who can are required to maintain this fast during daylight hours. Children, pregnant women, sick people, and travelers are not required to fast. At dusk, people may eat and drink again. During this season, in traditional village life, women laid aside their traditional cosmetics such as henna, kohl and perfume as part of their abstinence. At the end of Ramadan, at the sighting of the new crescent moon, Muslims return to the joys of physical life: food, drink, and pleasures, appreciating the gifts of life more for the month's privation. Henna is a symbol of, and part of, the earthly delight in being alive.

The end of Ramadan is celebrated with gifts, family parties, street carnivals, new clothing … and henna! This celebration is called “The Little Feast”, or the “Id al-Fitr” comparing it to “The Great Feast” of “Id al-Adha” at the end of Hajj. Village celebrations often goes on for seven days, and this is a favourite time to schedule marriages. In Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, all the countries across North Africa to South Asia, Muslim people look forward to Id celebrations, as Christians look forward to Easter. To the extent that each family could provide, everyone had new clothing, jewelry, shoes, and gifts.

Women schedule a special trip to the village bath the evening before "Id al-Fitr". They had given up perfumes and cosmetics for Ramadan, and are anxious to clean up to look their best in their new holiday clothing. At the hammam, the village bath, they wash and hennaed their hair, hennaed their fingertips, palms, and soles. If the women had the means and the leisure time, they would arrange for a henna artist to come to their home for a henna party. They celebrate their return to adornment and beauty with their perfumes, their jewelry, their kohl, and their henna.

Because this is a busy holiday season, and henna takes time to apply and dry, most women get simple patterns, less elaborate than a bridal pattern. Well-to-do women could afford the time and expense of a professional artist to have prettier patterns.

Most people apply henna at the end of Ramadan. Children, older women, and men would have just a little henna, perhaps just their soles, or fingernails.

In Bahrain at "Id al-Fitr", itinerant merchants and carnival operators put up little ferry wheels and merry-go-rounds in available vacant spaces. Children often get little gifts of money for the holiday, and they love to spend it at these carnivals. Docile donkeys are scrubbed up, beautified with henna, and put out in fancy harnesses, and children gleefully pay a few coins to have a holiday ride on these hennaed donkeys!

In Islam, believers are called upon to cease all consumption of food and drink between the hours of daylight for 30 consecutive days. After dark during Ramadan, people may eat and drink as much as they wish.

Both the start and the finish of Ramadan coincide with the sighting of the new moon in the sky. Today, despite modern technology, the month of Ramadan may still begin and end on different days in different countries depending on the reliable sighting of the crescent moon.

There is a wide range of customs and traditions that mark the Eid el-Fitr celebrations in various countries in North Africa, the Middle and Far East and even in the Pacific, but in general it is looked upon as a day of family, rather than public celebration. The day always starts with special Eid prayers at the main mosque (also attended by the women in some countries), followed later in the day by a large celebratory lunch at the house of the senior member of the family. Everywhere children receive gifts of cash and new clothes.

Preparation for the festival often starts the day before and the entire celebration can last up to five days. In Bahrain, people even mark the half-way point in Ramadan. On the 15th day, children dress smartly and call at their friends' and neighbours' homes in the evening and are given sweets. On Eid el-Fitr itself, the family lunch will consist of biryani (a mixed rice dish of meat and spices), sago dishes, stuffed, sweet pastries (sambouseh), and other sweetmeats.