Assalamualaikum everyone! I’d like to say Eid Mubarak for all muslims around the world 🙂 It is such a blessing to celebrate Eid again, alhamdulillah. I’d also like to ask for forgiveness if there are any wrongdoings of mine (I’m not sure if this is a tradition among all muslims or just Indonesian? Well, in some cultures, it is quite unusual if we so suddenly ask for forgiveness when we have not done anything wrong. But anyways.)
So I would like to share a bit of my Eid story this year. For us Indonesians, Eid is about gathering with our family. We have “mudik” tradition, where one shall return to their parents or close family’s house during Eid. My mom comes from Magelang and my dad comes from Malang. This year alhamdulillah I have been able to “mudik” to both cities.
I started mudik on the night of Eid. This is considered quite tight as other people like to mudik two or three days before Eid so that they can help for the Eid preparation early. But my family still have things to do in Jogja and I personally like to spend the last days of Ramadan in Jogja. On the night of Eid in Indonesia there is a tradition called “takbiran” where people go out and say takbir. Often we also like to celebrate by having fireworks. So one of the advantage of having mudik on the night of Eid is that we can see a lot of fireworks along the way 😀
I celebrated first day of Eid at my mom’s family in Grabag, Magelang. This family is where I still have a grandmother and we are told to pay a visit for the elder in our family first. My grandma lives in a small village on bottom of Andong Mountain. I love it there because the air is cool and we can see a lot of nature. Probably due to the fact that I was born in this place that made me like this place a lot (fyi, my sister doesn’t like it as much as I do :p).
Early that day, we went to pray Eid at the biggest mosque named Mosque Al Moqorrobin. We prayed two rakaahs and listened to an Eid sermon. To our surprise, the sermon was delivered in Bahasa Indonesia instead of Javanese. After that we paid a little visit to my grandpa’s grave to pray for him.
Soon we got home and started the “sungkeman”. Sungkeman is a tradition where we ask for forgiveness to the elders. We also ask for their dua and blessings for our future. It is believed that the blessings from the elders will increase our good fortune.
And it is time to have some food! In Indonesia we have rice cakes covered in palm leaf called “ketupat” and chicken curry called “opor” as must haves for Eid. For Javanese, ketupat is called “kupat” and it is said to be the short of “ngaku lepat” or admitting mistakes. So it is a symbol for asking for forgiveness.
This year on our table we have ketupat, opor, sambel tahu (spicy tofu curry), semur kentang daging (sweet potato and beef), kerupuk udang (shrimp crackers), peyek (crackers with nuts) and many more crackers. Yumm yumm 😀
After this we spend the rest of the day visiting families and receiving many guests. We visit our neighbors and families and likewise they come to our place too. We catch up with them and share stories. It was so nice to see people you only get to see once a year.
Tradition for our family, we must visit a small stall selling “bakso” (meatball soup) in the bus terminal named Bakso Pak Mangun. I don’t know why, on normal days I don’t find bakso so special, but during Eid (and probably because of the cool weather) our family always crave to eat here. So at night after all the visiting we drop by to eat here.
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