THE GREATER EID AND HALLOWEEN

                                                      HALLOWEEN

    Halloween is the one of the oldest holidays still celebrated today.It is celebrated on October 31st,and it is the last day of the Celtic calendar.After Christmas,it is the most popular.Principally,it was a pagan holiday and it was referred to as All Hallows Eve and dates back to over 2000 years ago.All Hallows Eve is the evening before All Saints Day which was created by Christians to convert pagans, and is celebrated on November 1st. The Catholic church honored saints on this designated day.While millions of people celebrate Halloween without knowing its origins and myths, the history and facts of Halloween make the holiday more fascinating.Some people see Halloween as a time for fun, putting on costumes, trick-or-treating, and having theme parties. Others view it as a time of superstitions, ghosts, goblins and evil spirits that should be avoided at all costs.As the Christian debate goes on, celebrating Halloween is a preference that is not always viewed as participating in an evil holiday and is often celebrated with no reference to pagan rituals or the occult.Different cultures view Halloween somewhat differently but traditional Halloween practices remain the same.Halloween culture can be traced back to the Druids, a Celtic culture in Ireland, Britain and Northern Europe. Roots lay in the feast of Samhain, which was annually on October 31st to honor the dead.

                                             THE GREATER EID

      According to Muslim calendar,The Festival of Sacrifice (or the Greater Eid) is a religious holiday celebrated by Muslims.Eid al-Adha annually falls on the 10th day of the month of Dhul Hijja of the lunar Islamic calendar.The festivities last for three days or more depending on the country. It happens to be approximately 70 days after the end of the month of Ramadan.The name for the celebration varies from country to country,
     
     Another Arabic word for "sacrifice", (Arabic Qurban), was lent into Dari Persian - Afghanistan and Iranian dialect of Persian as Eyde Ghorbân (Persian), into Tajik Persian as Idi Qurbon, into Kazakh as Qurban ayt, into Uyghur as Qurban Heyit, and also into various Indic languages. Other languages combined the Arabic word qurban with local terms for "festival", as in Kurdish (Cejna Qurbanê), Pashto (Kurbaneyy Akhtar), Chinese (Chinese Gúerbang Jié), Malay and Indonesian (Hari Raya Korban, Qurbani), and Turkish (Kurban Bayrami). The Turkish term was then later borrowed into languages such as Azeri (Qurban Bayrami), Tatar (Qorban Bäyräme), Croatian and Bosnian (Kurban-bajram).
     Another Arabic name, ‘Id ul-Kabir (Arabic Id al-Kabir), meaning "Greater Eid/Festival", is used in Yemen, Syria, and North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt). The term was borrowed directly into French as Aïd el-Kebir. Translations of "Big Eid" or "Greater Eid" are used in Pashto Loy Akhtar, Kashmiri Baed Eid, Hindi and Urdu Baṛa Id, Malayalam Bali Perunnal, and Tamil Peru Nal.
      The Festival of Sacrifice holds a few key traditions. Men, women, and children dress in their finest clothing for prayer in an open area or mosque. Muslims who can afford to do so sacrifice their best domestic animals (usually sheep, but also camels, cows and goats) as a symbol of Ibrahim’s sacrifice. Generally, sacrificial animals must be at least one year of age.
      During Eid al-Adha, distributing meat amongst the people, chanting Takbir out loud before the Eid prayer on the first day, and after prayers throughout the four days of Eid are considered essential parts of the festival.