Why I Love Ramadan: Tradition

I'm a modern girl.  I live next to the world's tallest, most-futuristic building. I adore my I-pad.  I embrace all sorts of new technologies.  But I also love culture and tradition, and the desert family has strived to create some rituals in the three years that we've lived in the Middle East. 

We always attend the first polo event of the season, we throw ourselves into Ramadan events, we have Christmas Eve drinks at 360, we lunch on the Ritz's lawn on Christmas Day, and we watch Muppet Christmas Carol in the first week of December.  (Ok, I usually watch this alone as no-one else will join me, but you get the point.)

This week I discovered that there are many, many traditions during Ramadan that people take and adapt and call their own. 

My Egyptian friend spoke lovingly of a candle-lit lamp that her parents would bring out and light on the first night, of special cakes that they would bake together at Eid.  Without them, she says, Ramadan just doesn't feel like Ramadan. 

Which made me think: without the tree, without the lights, without the carols, without the turkey: would it still feel like Christmas? Well that, of course, is where your adopted family comes in.  They're the most important tradition of all.