Eid Al-Adha 2018

by | Sep 10, 2018 | Photo Stories

There was celebration of Eid Al-Adha in the middle of August 2018. My extended family from my mother side has its own tradition when it comes to celebrating Eid Al-Adha.

In my family, the day is generally can be divided into three parts: The actual ritual, family gathering, then distributing the cooked meats.

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What is Eid Al-Adha?

For those who don’t know anything about Eid Al-Adha, here’s a wikipedia link. An oversimplifying version of it: people who’s blessed with wealth buy farm animals, slaughter it, then distribute it to those who are less fortunate. In some part of the world, eating meat is luxury.

The Actual Eid Al-Adha ritual

I thought the way the Eid Al-Adha ritual is managed is pretty much the same anywhere else but it turns out I was wrong. I noticed this only after I got married and notice that my in-laws’ area have differences in handling it. In my hometown (Bandung), people is generally have their qurban handed off to mosque’s committee. The committee helped slaughtered the farm animal, skinned them, weight them, and distributed them to the less fortunate.

The way it goes is pretty much the same. Right after the Eid prayer, the ritual is started. 1) Mosque’s committee began slaughtering the animals, 2) Local communities curiously see how things goes, 3) One of the committee member reviewing how things goes after the cow have been slaughtered, 4) The cow, 5) The mosque committee which is largely consisting of member of local community skins the sheep

The Family Gathering

My mom’s family is a pretty big one with more than 8 siblings, a common situation for family at that time. Most of my mom’s siblings prayed Eid Al-Adha prayer and involved on their local mosque but as the time slides to the noon, they come to my mom’s house. My mom’s house is pretty much the gathering spot because my grandma used to live next to us.

Family gathering means obligatory group photo. 1) My family. 2) My parents’ family, 3) Me with the kids, 4) Mom with her siblings and their kids, 5) My kiddo with my nephew.

The Family Tradition

Now here comes the family tradition. Generally, a part of the slaughtered meat is owned / returned to the person who buy the animal farm for the Eid Al-Adha. My mom’s family have a tradition to cook their parts and shared them to local kids as cooked meal.

I’m not really sure how they end up with this tradition, but I think they just like the festive aura of it. Plus it is nice to gather around and do something nice together.

The followings are some of the photos that I managed to took regarding that tradition.

The meats are further sliced. Most of the meats are ended up being satay or curry.

The sticks for satay are being prepared.

Preparing the satay: stacking the meats into the sticks.

Grilling the satay. Things are done in a rather traditional fashion: the meant is grilled on top of burning wood charcoal.

The kids were to excited came too early around 11am and returned empty handedly. The meals are usually ready around 1pm-ish.

When the time came, the queue usually ends up being pretty long.

Sometimes the kids came with their parents. Sometimes the parents come by themselves.

One of my aunty usually prepared stacks of pocket money and give them to the kids. I guess that is the kids most favourite part.

The kids receiving the cooked meal. It isn’t fancy, but to some even this is already luxurious.

A simple stamp is given to the kids who have received the cooked meal so they don’t re-queue.

After all the cooked meals are distributed, my cousins seem like scheming another thing.

Photo Notes

All pictures were taken using Sony α7 mark 2 + FE 24mm f2 OSS lens / FE 50mm f1.8 OSS lens. Things are looking good overall, although not mindblowingly stellar. I think i need to work more on my angle and point of view.