Christmas Comes to the Desert
Is it just me, Dubai folks, or has there been a drastic increase recently in the amount of, uh, well, Christmas that’s tolerated by our beloved Muslim host country?
I could swear that when I moved here in 2007, you weren’t supposed to say “Christmas” in official contexts… you know, the same way that restaurants run advertisements for boozy brunches using awkward turns of phrase like “free-flowing house beverages” and “unlimited bubbly” so they don’t expose an accidental Muslim reader to the harsh, cold, haram reality that OMG there is alcohol in this country!
Maybe memory fails me (too many of those “house beverages,” no doubt) but I feel like it’s always been “holidays” this or “festive season” that here in Dubai. Recently, however, I’ve really noticed a spike in the amount of balls-out “Christmas” propaganda - even Mercato, one of the most local (read: Emirati, hence Muslim) malls in Dubai, had its halls decked to the nines with wreathes and trees this weekend.
That didn’t prepare me, though, to see Spinneys - the major local grocery chain, beloved by Arabs and South Asians and Westerners alike and always one to toe the line with their “Eid Mubaraks” and their “Ramadan Kareems” - advertising Christmas on their shopping bags.
But there it is, right there on the bag in plain ol’ Arabic - eid milad majid min sbeenis, “Glorious ‘Christmas Eid’ from Spinneys” … or as it gets translated on the English side, “A Very Spinneys Christmas.”
I don’t even know if you’d see this kind of thing in the US these days, what with the war on Christmas and all.
It kind of pains me to say this, but big ups to the UAE for some holiday cheer tolerance! Now maybe we can work on getting a giant menorah erected in Dubai Mall…
… no? Too soon?
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ameliainamerica liked this
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duwane-a said:
Very, very true. It was only a few days ago when I took it all in and realized, that this year it’s very different. And I couldn’t help but laugh at the last comment :)
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gubbiofarabia posted this
The (mis)adventures of an All-American girl in the Middle East.
