The first sight that brought a huge smile to my face (other than seeing my family waiting eagerly for me at the airport) was the huge Christmas tree right outside the "Welcome to Houston" airport doors. Dubai, as a Muslim country, does not celebrate Christmas. There are still Christmas trees and various decor items (including nativity scenes!) at most of the big supermarkets, but it's not the same as here where all the malls and almost every store and business establishment is decorated and playing Christmas music.
The next big smile was brought by Christmas lights decorating so many houses!!! I'd forgotten I'd even missed those! In Dubai, there are two cultures that I can think of right now who display lights on their homes--Indians and Arabs. The Indians (especially Hindus) celebrated Diwali, or the Festival of Lights, around mid-October and I don't remember how long it lasted, but it seemed like maybe a month or so! At any rate, the big supermarkets had a lot of Diwali foods and decorations out at that time also, and you would see mulit-colored lights displayed in windows or on apartment balcony/porches. It was fun to see! The Arabs, on the other hand, will deck out their houses in hundreds of strands of white lights for weddings. This is really a fun sight to see as it will just be one random house in a neighborhood that is glowing from all the lights draped all over their house and swooping from their rooftop to the villa wall (not really sure how they sleep)! These lights stay up for about a week and add to the festivity of the whole event (I don't know if that's the real reason they're up or not, but they're definitely beautiful and fun!).
One of the cool things about living in a different country is that you get to celebrate (or at least experience) their holidays--one of the cool things about living in Dubai is that you get to celebrate (or at least experience) the holidays of a LOT of cultures!!! I've already mentioned Diwali, which obviously isn't a UAE-observed holiday*, but it is on the list of interesting experiences. Two of the big UAE holidays that have happened this fall are Eid (a Muslim holiday) and National Day (a UAE holiday). Eid was at the beginning of November this year (Muslims follow the lunar calendar so the date changes some each year). This holiday commemorates Abraham offering his son Ishmael as a sacrifice to God out of obedience to Him (yes, this differs from the Biblical account in one major detail). This was still a very fun holiday for us as many of the labor workers had off that day and we had a barbecue and various other fun things going on that day (sorta like a Labor Day party in the States). National Day (or UAE Day), on December 2, was also quite festive, not so much for us, but it's always fun to see how other people celebrate! This year was even more fun since it marked 40 years of the UAE being a nation! Villas were draped with ginormous UAE flags; cars were decked out with pictures of the sheiks and smaller flags; the fire department on the main road had a huge flag-banner hung up for 2 weeks; large buildings had flag-lights displayed at nighttime; red, green, black and white could be seen EVERYWHERE!!! People started putting up decorations a week or so ahead of time and a few houses still had their flags up when I left a couple days ago! During the days surrounding UAE Day the residential streets were littered with confetti and streamers. Congrats, UAE!!!
Okay, well, that's all the comparisons I think I'll make right now. I'm sure there are other holidays that I'm missing including here (3 doesn't seem like very many), but it's now 6am and I can hear my mom stirring about the house, so I guess I'll get started on my day here (plus then I'll be able to make "up at the crack of noon" jokes on my sisters when they get up in an hour--and before you feel bad for them, just know that I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually gotten up before them in the past 10 years).
Merry Christmas!!!
*I guess I would be remiss in my account if I didn't mention my favorite holiday--Thanksgiving. This is another non-UAE-observed holiday, which was kinda weird for us Americans. The kids that I work with all go to American schools which were closed that day, so they didn't have to skip school, but for all non-Americans, it was just a normal workday! Turkeys were available in some stores as were cranberries and cranberry sauce and some other traditional Thanksgiving foods, but there were no big signs or decorations up for this holiday.
