Eid Celebrations: A Collaboration with Arisha

Hey guys! I’ve been busy this whole past week with Eid celebrations!

I’ve decided to do a collab with the very talented Arisha to give everyone an idea of how we celebrate our Eid. Since I live in America, and Arisha lives in Pakistan, our posts will be talking about how we celebrate Eid in the two countries. I think it’s so interesting how everyone around the world celebrates differently, and this post can give everyone an idea of that! 🙂

Chaand Raat:

So Chaand Raat basically means the night of the moon. It’s the night before Eid after the moon is sighted. On this night all the ladies come together and get henna on their hands to get ready for Eid celebrations. At my house, we do a Chaand Raat open house where we basically invite a henna lady to come over and apply henna. We invited everyone we knew to come and get henna on their hands!

This particular henna lady is absolutely amazing. She makes organic henna by herself and the color is always breathtaking. We have been addicted to her henna for the past five years! Check her out @hennabyshazia

Eid (day 1)

IMG_0601 (1) — How we wrapped everyone’s Eidi (Eid money)

My hands (and a sneak peak of my outfit)

My outfit. For Eid in America, we wear heavier outfits, like outfits that are usually worn to weddings.

The first day of Eid was so much fun! First, we woke up at 7 and got ready to go pray Eid prayer. My mom ordered this cookie cake for us as an “Eid breakfast”. As I mentioned before, in a previous post, my siblings and I did a gift exchange with each other!

For the Eid gift exchange, I ended up getting a pleated skirt, a denim jacket, a pack of face masks, and a lovely watch! I really loved my gifts.

After the gift exchange, a bunch of our family friends came over for a brunch, and we all had a lot of fun to hanging out with them. It is customary for the adults to give Eid money to the kids in our friends circle. So this year, my sister had a lot of fun wrapping the Eid money to look like candy!

After the brunch, we went to another family friends house for dinner, and that was a lot of fun too! We ended up coming home at 12, tired but very happy.

Overall it was a really amazing day!

Eid (days 2 and 3)

Since the first day of Eid was on a Sunday, we didn’t do anything for the second and third days because my dad had work. There are always some drawbacks when you live so far away from your family and culture.

My family in Pakistan celebrated all three days of Eid with each other, whereas we went back to our regular routine, grateful for the one day of celebration that we had.

There is also always a sense of longing to celebrate Eid with family instead of friends, something that I have only done once in my life!

Eid in Pakistan:

Well, that is all I have for my celebrations in America! Time to jet across the world to Arisha’s blog and read about how Eid is celebrated in Pakistan! Believe me, it will be very different than the celebration I had 🙂