A Very Muslim Christmas

I couldn't be happier that the kids have friends who are Emirati. A local family in our neighborhood send their kids to the Australian School with ours, and after school, they all play wild games of tag and share snacks of popcorn and chicken hotdogs when we see them in the park. They bury their shoes in the sand, climb to the tops of monkeybars, laughing their heads off while getting utterly filthy in the twilight.

Watching the sandy, teeming packs of kids, I forget that the culture and language here are totally different from my own. Or maybe not totally.

The other day, Gebrille, 9, was tooling around on the sidewalk showing off a shiny remote control car. When he came close enough for me to admire his car, he told me it was a Christmas present from last year. I said hold on kid, isn't your family Muslim? And he said well yes but it's ok it's ok, our family doesn't think Christmas is Haram.

Haram, pronounced 'Hah-RAHM', means Forbidden in Islam, and is one of the first words you learn here as a foreigner. Wearing shorts in Sharjah is Haram. Alcohol is Haram. Men and women socializing together is Haram. And therefore, I would assume, that anything surrounding a Christian holiday would certainly be HARAM. No miss no miss, he says, Christmas is OK, my mom speaks good English, so Christmas is ok its ok. Seeing my puzzlement he went on to say but No miss, even though we have Christmas, Halloween is Haram and we never do trick or treating, our neighbors wouldn't like it.

Before I could query him any more he took off with the car and left me to mull over a family whose mom covers her hair in Muslim tradition, but also doles out gifts on December 25.