Holidays

From Isabel and Simone
1. What do they do at Christmas time?
2. What different holidays do they have?

ANSWER: Well I haven't celebrated Christmas in Indonesia yet but I can't imagine that it's any different than Malaysia or the U.S. In Malaysia the malls would all decorate for Christmas and there would be a Santa Claus and everyone would shop and get the day off from school or work. Last Christmas my husband and I had a friend visit from Chicago and everyone knows Chicago is cold at Christmas time so of course we went to the beach!

The Indonesian calendar offers a generous number of national holidays called "red dates" or tanggal merah (tahn-gall mur-rah) which no matter what religion you practice, you get to take the day off. The really big holiday that most Indonesians look forward and who practice under the Islamic faith is called Lebaran (luh-bah-run). This holiday was also observed in Malaysia but called Idul Fitri. To me, I compare this holiday to Christmas even though he has nothing to do with the birth of Christ but the days leading up to it and the anticipation everyone has for this day is similar to Christmas. Basically this holiday celebrates the end of Ramadhan. This is 30 days that from sun-up to sun-down Muslims fast during the day. They are not allowed to eat or drink anything unless they are children, pregnant, or elderly. From what I undestand, most people in Jakarta go home for Lebaran so you can really notice the number of people that are not born in Jakarta. They say the city becomes peaceful, the traffic is reasonable, shops and restaurants close, even the store shelves seem empty since the stock boys have all gone home. A lot of expats have to let their household staff like nannies, maids, drivers take vacation at this time and also by law give their staff a bonus in addition to their salaries so that everyone may have the money to travel to their home and buy gifts.

There are similar holidays in the Indonesian calendar that we celebrate in the U.S. as well. Since Indonesia is predominately Muslim, most are events in the Islamic faith that they celebrate. They celebrate the Prophet Muhammed's birthday (he's like our Jesus Christ, kinda) and the day Prophet Muhammed ascended to Heaven. There's also New Years Day, Independence Day (Aug. 17th), the birthday of Jakarta (June 22), Armed Forces Day (Oct. 5), Hero's Day (Nov.10) and the Hindus give Indonesia Balinese New Year or better known as the Day of Silence. This is a day off in Jakarta but seriously celebrated in Bali where traditionally people take a vow of silence for the day. Followers of the Hindu faith should not eat, speak, use anything electrical, make any journeys, or light any fires for 24 hours. Parts of Bali will be in total blackness and silence during this time. The reason for it is because the night before the vow of silence there is a lot of noise, fireworks, music, drums banging, children laughing and playing, just people making as much racket as they can so that the evil spirits of the world can be awakened with curiosity to see what's going on and when the spirits find the island in absolute silence the next day they will hopefully panic and leave. There is also a parade on the day of noise with ogah present (see photo), these are demonic mannequins designed again to scare off evil spirits.

I enjoyed all of the different holidays in Malaysia and Indonesia offers some new ones that I can't wait to experience for myself.