Celebration

In our religion and culture, almost every “habesha” family has a gathering of people in order to celebrate a different saint and angel depending on the meaning of this angel to the family. For example, in my family we celebrate the angel Michael on the 21st of November. On this day Angel Michael performed a miracle for the entire Christian community and therefore we respect and celebrate this day with other people from our culture and from our community. The first time we started this habit is when my mother-in-law came to visit me in Uganda and she told me about how the whole village would celebrate this day together and now we do it in my house.

A day or two before the 21st of November, a lot of women from my family or my friends and daughters gather in the kitchen to cook. Usually this falls on the month of fasting, so we prepare a meat and dairy free meal. Because we are hosting a lot of people, there is a large amount of money being spent on food and drinks and other things. When other people celebrate this, they usually just cook the food and take to the church on the angel’s day and basically feed the church group after payers. By doing that they are not spending much time on organizing a venue for the amount of people they plan to invite. But when I celebrate it, I like to invite priests and deacons to my house in order to bless it for me.