New Muslims: Help for the Holidays

Bart Simpson said "Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ" but he was not quite right according to this at Islam Online.

[Q. John:] As a new Muslim, can I celebrate Xmas with my non-Muslim parents?

[A. Idris Tawfiq:] As-salaamu 'alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu. Thank you for your question.

I was talking to a teacher yesterday. Her classroom is the most decorated in the school with tinsel and Christmas tree and lots of decorations. She told me that she has a tree at home, even though she is agnostic and has no religious belief at all.

In many places, Christmas has become a festival of family and friends. It is for them a celebration of happy memories and a time to relax in the dark of winter. Celebrating Christmas nowadays, then, does not need to mean that we believe in the birth of Jesus as the messiah or the Son of God.

So celebrating Christmas with our parents presents us with no problems at all. We know that we are not celebrating the religious side of the feast and, if our parents are religious, we need to point this out. We can still have fun with them, though, and show how much we still love them.