The Madness for Celebrations in Palestine

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Certainly, room must always be made for joyous celebrations, even in the darkest of circumstances. People are not machines that move at a single pace and in a single behavioral pattern. Celebrations rest the soul and the heart and renew energy and vitality, and it is important for the political and social planner to be aware of this matter, and to put in place various programs to meet people’s needs, so that the people remain motivated, active, and capable of giving and producing. Celebrations and times of leisure have a clear purpose connected to people’s psychological health, to the continuity of what they give, and to the effort needed to achieve accomplishments.

But celebrations in Palestine are taking on another dimension now. Of course, the Palestine occupied in ‘48 entered a dark tunnel in this regard long ago, and people there conduct their celebrations, weddings especially, in a vulgar, cheap, and frenzied manner. They go to great excess in their celebrations and spend enormous sums of money, and they also beg a great deal through what is called “gift money” (naqout) to cover the exorbitant costs. People in occupied Palestine spend months every year preoccupied with this gift money, and the head of the household is constantly preoccupied with the sums he owes in repayment to those who gave gift money to his son or daughter on the day of their wedding or their graduation. People have forgotten that they live under occupation and humiliation, and have busied themselves with matters that make their predicament worse and their lives harder, and that mortgage them to the Zionist banks.

It appears that people vent their crises into such matters, and the political planner is quite pleased with this repugnant distraction.

As a university professor with scholarly and academic duties, I affirm that I would be unable to accomplish any productive work if I were to answer every invitation that reaches me, or if I were too gracious in order to appease those who take offense. I would have to abandon books, articles, research, and teaching, roll up my sleeves, and keep running from this hall to that one, from this house to that one.

People now widen the circle of invitees enormously. The groom invites the entire population of his town, and perhaps also the people of neighboring villages, and his mother leaves no one uninvited to the celebration. Some have reached the point of standing in a public place handing out invitation cards in a ridiculous manner, as if telling people: come and give my son gift money. The excess has even reached the tawjihi (the general secondary certificate), whose success used to be a matter for the closest relatives and friends alone. Now all of Nablus is expected to celebrate the tawjihi graduate and drag itself to the halls. It has reached the point that some women make the rounds of several places for congratulations and well-wishes in a single day. Everywhere you hear the same songs, whose star is perhaps Fares Karam, the same dances are performed, and the same greetings are exchanged.

There is a great deal of excess in these celebrations, and sometimes vulgarity, as happens in the city of Ramallah. Weddings sometimes turn into occasions for begging, and sometimes the bride and groom boast about the amount of gift money they collected. This is contrary to God’s law, and contrary to human reason, and these bad customs must be stopped. Celebration is necessary, and it can very well take place with only the presence of close relatives and friends.

The political and social planner is required to put in place various productive programs so as to fill people’s time with work and production, and so that leisure may carry a deep human meaning after exertion.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “جنون الأفراح في فلسطين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.