Featured photo from PFLAG
Hey Straddlers! Happy Friday, Happy Saturday if you’re in my part of the world, and Happy Lunar New Year to those of you that celebrate it!
I personally don’t come from a culture that celebrates Lunar New Year, but growing up in ~Malaysia Truly Asia~ with friends, neighbors, and oodles of “aunties and uncles” from multiple cultures meant that you celebrated everyone’s holidays – all the food, all the money packets, all the family open houses. And of course, all the decorations and the holiday music that permeate the ridiculous number of malls across Malaysia (we have too many malls). The ringing of “Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni Ah” will never leave me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYzJwFLap8c
My family’s main cultural holiday, being Muslim, is Eid – specifically, Eid ul-Fitr or Hari Raya Aidilfitri, which celebrates the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. The vibe is a lot like Christmas meets Thanksgiving – with money packets instead of gifts and a larger focus on asking for & granting forgiveness than gratitude necessarily, but plenty of festive spirit and so. much. food. Curries with every kind of variation on meat and vegetable, multiple types of rice, snacks, desserts – it’s like we’re trying to make up for a month of not eating anything from dusk to dawn by eating it all in one or two days. I’m especially fond of Malaysian kuih raya – cookies, crackers, chips, cakes, and other confections only really available during the holiday season and somehow almost always the exact same recipes across decades & households but still so good that I beg my parents to hold on to a few boxes for me and bring them over next time they visit me or I visit them. (Just under six months to go.)
Do you celebrate any particular cultural holidays? Are there any that are coming up, or any that just happened? What’s your favorite part of your holidays? Does it also involve copious amount of cookies and jingles?
Or just tell me about your past week! Friday Open Threads are our little kind of cultural holiday anyway! (Maybe we should design an Autostraddle holiday kuih.)
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