My seven year old wants to celebrate Christmas.  He’d like a Christmas tree with the the works.  He insists on presents and stockings.  My husband remembers asking the same from his parents when he was that age.  I do too.  Christmas probably has the distinction of being the most beloved holiday for kids, because of this guy.

What’s not to love about Santa?  He’s a fat old jolly dude that brings free toys.  Which is great and all except for one minor technicality –  we’re not Christian.  We’re Muslim.  In our house, Dec 25 usually just means we get to sleep in and you have to buy essentials early the day before because even the zombies at Walmart get the day off.

But try telling my kids that.  I wouldn’t know where to start.  Saying Santa only visits Christian homes makes him sound like a selective, prejudiced bastard, so that was out.

Before you tell me to haul my non conforming ass back to my own country, let me tell you that celebrating or not celebrating Christmas is not the issue here.  We respect all religions and to take part in the festivities of any holiday, be it Christmas or Diwali, would just mean more fun for us.  Besides, Muslims love Jesus just as much as Christians do.  I look forward to buying a little tree and sticking some presents underneath it, while telling my sons I texted Santa the code to our alarm system so he won’t set off the motion sensor.

The issue is that for my kids, Christmas is Cinderella and Eid her fat footed, big nosed sister.  No, we don’t celebrate Ramadan, just like you don’t celebrate November.  Eid is the name of the holiday and Ramadan is the the holy month that precedes it.  In the voting booths of kids brains everywhere, Christmas has taken a far lead over Eid, since one means presents and the other means a month of daily food deprivation.  Clear winner here.  This isn’t the presidential election of 2000.

In an effort to make the holiday more appealing to kids, my husband and his college friends once thought up a character by the name of Eid Saeed.  A Muslim Santa Clause.  I don’t know what they were smoking when they did it.  Eid Saeed would shake things up for the holiday, all right.  The idea of a Muslim guy who enters U.S. air space by magic and goes into people’s homes in the dead of night with a bag full of things you can’t see is definitely going to excite people.  Especially the authorities.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I really don’t have any solution to the aforementioned problem so that’s right, I’m just going to leave things hanging.  We already make Eid an occasion more  enjoyable for our kids than visiting Disney World.  I’m not going to fly Mickey Mouse out here now, too, because his ginormous rodent ass only travels first class.