Cows and Christmas Trees
December 20, 2007

Tomorrow is the second Eid, the second of the two main holidays in Islam. This is the holiday where Muslims sacrifice a cow (or goat) in recognitions of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael. (For more details on the holiday you can see my blog from last year: http://kboekhoff.blogspot.com/2007/01/fulbright-blog-place-dhaka-date-january.html) Christmas, the main Christian holiday, is also only a couple of days away.

I was sitting in my friend Borhan's cafe, Cofi 11, tonight talking to him. Borhan is a religious Muslim (he has a beard and doesn't drink alcohol) and we were sitting next to a Christmas tree with Christmas carols playing in the background. It was all a very surreal experience. I asked him about the tree and he told me that over half of his staff were Christian and that they found the tree.

We then got into a light-hearted philosophical discussion about cows and Christmas trees and about how as symbols they are actually amazingly similar:

1) they start out alive and then we kill them
2) they are both decorated (the cows wear paper necklaces)
3) they symbolize rebirth - Abraham got Ismael back and the tree was originally a pagan symbol of rebirth
4) they are the primary symbol of the major religious holiday of their respective religions

So who says Muslims and Christians are so different? :)