Christmas and a Muslim husband .. help!

[AmberHiker]

Hello everyone I’d really like some outside perspective because I’m literally drained from going around in circles with my husband .

He is a born Muslim. He is on and off with the level of practising but mainly sticks to the key principles of Islam but has not been praying for some years now . I am a revert. I am not a ‘ practising ‘ Muslim but I believe in Islam and what it stands for .

we have a 8 year old son and I have older kids who aren’t Muslim. For the past 11 years I’ve changed up Christmas but not given it up as for me it was never about the relegious aspect it was about the feeling , the gift giving and decorating the home plus enjoying all the foods and so on. With our son I still decorate the home and we exchange gifts a few days before Christmas. He is aware of who god is to him and to us and what we believe in.

my husband has really been giving me a hard time over recent weeks . He has stated I’m a Christian which I’m not and that I’m acting just like one . He refuses to agree that for me I’ve never linked Christmas to religion and he’s never seen me do it. He keeps going into massive tantrums pointing out I’m showing our son the wrong way . This is making me upset as I don’t feel we have much to look forward too in the uk and Christmas is a nice time of year. I enjoy the festivity and owe it to my older grown children to share with them.

when I point out that he is not doing anything that would identify him as a Muslim to me if I didn’t know him he gets offended. He is not practising not praying not fasting but is determined to take this away from me and our son. like I said if he was devout I could understand the possible problem by example having a tree in the house decorated but he isn’t and the whole thing seems so stupid .

for context he was previously married to a devout Christian who taught and showed him about Christmas ( this is where I think he has the impression it’s for relegious people ) and during their marriage Christmas a big thing in their home too, but so was bacon and alcohol. If I was to ask him was he a Muslim where he was married to her he would say yes he was yet that was allowed to happen …

sorry for the rant but all I do is share some gifts and decorate the home yet it’s a constant battle any mention of the c word and boom it’s a argument. He said I should spend the same effort showing our son about Islam but when I pointed out it’s his job as the man to lead he said he doesn’t have time to show him.. 😂

am I wrong to not give it up

Your older children are Christian as was the muslim husband's first wife so there has been a huge amount of christianity on both sides until now. It sounds like the husband is not prepared to compromise or even continue as before. You celebrate it 2 days before. Can't you just call it something else like - Winterval lunch or Winter solstice longest day of the year lunch, leave Christ out of it and just have a nice lunch with the Christian adult children and the younger muslim son?.

I actually think there was nothing in that post that was racial stereotyping in the slightest.
The OP had acted the same for the past 11 years, is hasn’t been an issue until very recently so the question is, why is it now an issue? What is influencing him to have these new views?
Even the OP herself thinks he’s just using this difference as an excuse to berate her.

So this is obviously a bigger issue than a question of religion. How religion is observed is deeply personal and complicated.

I'm Jewish and was raised in an observant household. I married 'out' and my husband is a cultural Christian. We celebrate all the Jewish holidays... plus our (jewish) children join daddy to celebrate Christmas and Easter in our house. We decorate for Chanukah and Christmas and have all the food. We are also immigrants so celebrate some other cultural holidays (from our original home plus our adopted home in Scotland) as well - it's a bit of a mixing pot here!

It took us quite a while to get to a place we were both comfortable - or at least comfortable enough. I definitely didn't grow up with anything about Christmas and none of my friends either (as my parents are fairly religious the majority of my childhood was spent in Jewish homes). There were no Chanukah trees etc - it was a strictly avoided. But it was important to my husband to maintain his own family traditions as well as mine so we figured it out - we have a tree but no church or Santa. We exchange gifts but keep them modest as we also do gifts for Chanukah. We volunteer locally as that was my family tradition on Christmas... etc.

So there are a million ways a mixed household can look and a million compromises to be made but just being nasty about it won't help anything. If your other children are adults and out of the house could you compromise and visit them to celebrate? Is it important to you to teach your child about his own religion or are you happy for him to explore options? If the most fun times in the house are around Christianity that will affect things so it's important you consider that too (my kids love Christmas and that was a bit of an odd feeling for me at first - felt like I was betraying my ancestors or something!)

This isn't about Christmas, it's about control and is entirely unacceptable.

You can choose to celebrate any festival you want. If he doesn't agree with it he doesn't have to take part.

Please don't let anyone control you to this level.

I'm an atheist but I celebrate Christmas, not in a religious way but I just like it. The decorations, giving presents, the break from work and seeing family and friends. It's like a reset at the end of the year. That sounds exactly what you are doing and I think he's wrong to make a huge deal out of it.

Salam OP…

few things, if you’re a revert even if not practicing (which islamically your husband is accountable for so, he’s got some questions to ask himself there on how to be a better role model) he should NOT call you a Christian. That is unacceptable.

it is only natural that you’d feel a pull towards Xmas, it’s your cultural inheritance and from November onwards that’s all we see.

BUT, celebrating Xmas Islamically is prohibited. You know this. Decorating your home etc, I’m sorry but I’m with your husband. It is wrong.

that being said, if you went to a family members house that day who had decorated, I don’t see too much of a problem there. Likewise if you cooked a halal roast that day, are chocolates and spent the day with family. If people give you gifts then you can accept them. There are schools of thought that say you can buy a card too, as long as it’s not a religious one, so maybe there is a middle ground.

i know you said before he was married to a Christian, but I think that’s different Islamically speaking. The husband then still should escort his wife to church but the family religion then is still Islam

MN is quite anti Muslim so just brace yourself for some non shariah compliant and maybe even hostile responses

You shouldn't be laughing about your husband saying he doesn't have time to show your son about being a Muslim. He's throwing his weight around but he wants YOU to do all the hard work.

If you genuinely believe in Islam being the one true religion, then celebrating Christmas is seen as a sin. There's consensus amongst scholars.

This is something you should have discussed before you got married and had children. I’m Jewish and my husband is an atheist (though raised Christian). It’s one of the key things our officiant had us focus on ironing out before she would agree to marry us. We do actually celebrate Christmas culturally - even though neither of us is Christian. There is no right answer. It’s just something you should have sorted out before you committed to a life together.

Bin him off

Someone is in his ear. Instead of working on himself he is trying to outsource his guilt.

OP I live in an area with a high Muslim population and more and more they embrace Christmas wholeheartedly. Jesus is a major prophet of Islam so they see no conflict of interest.

A lot of it is for the kids. They want to know why they haven't got a pretty tree; there's a lot made of Father Christmas only coming 'if you've been good' so the Muslim kids want to know what they've done wrong if he doesn't bring them any presents. I was in Bradford a few years ago when I saw two Asian (and presumably Muslim) mums with their kids, anxiously asking Santa's elf if it was OK for their kids to go into his grotto and meet him. (It was.) Full on Christmas dinner or at least turkey curry.

I think you need to face up to the fact that this isn't about Christmas and Islam. Your DH has turned on you and is using this for his own ends. If you gave in and said OK, no Christmas, he'd find something else. He's a hypocrite, full of do as I say not as I do. This is about control, not Christmas.

LTB

Op please don’t take Islamic advice from non Muslims.

‘Never will they be pleased with you until you believe what they believe’

we have an ayah for this

@Mvslimah MN is quite anti Muslim so just brace yourself for some non shariah compliant and maybe even hostile responses

I actually think the only hostile responses have been from other Muslims who seem to suggest the only solution is for OP to bend and change rather than her husband.
OP has said she is non practicing, as is her husband, she isn’t suggesting an interest in living a devout lifestyle so the comments telling her she is wrong are really unnecessary imo.
OP has lived her life this way for almost a decade, there is a reason her DH is trying to dictate this one aspect of her life and I don’t think it’s anything to do with his personal beliefs.

Can you show him it's come from pagan times to bring hope in darkest winter and then taken by christians?

It's very well known really I'm surprised he doesn't know this and is insisting on seeing everything in terms of religion??

Islamically though, they are wrong, especially as born Muslims. Yes Isa is a major profit but we don’t believe in the Christian Jesus (i.e fully human and fully divine, son of god, part of the trinity, rose from the dead) and whilst Christmas is celebrated culturally it has religious roots and we are not meant to celebrate the festivals of other religions

So the post I challenged states "..as in a Muslim households the man is the boss generally and the woman does what the man requires only". I know very few Muslim households like this and certainly no more than I would no Christian or any other religions. The post is just a quite lazy stereotype.

its because they are telling her the truth, you might not like it and that’s ok you don’t have to. But the truth is, as a Muslim, her husband is right about the Xmas thing. I’m sorry you don’t like it, but it’s the truth.

its why I suggested a middle ground of maybe visiting family and not decorating your home and maybe do some gifts with them.
You can still do lovely wintery things like light trails etc and have a lovely roast dinner and spend time with friends and family.

Hmm, any chance he has actually been watching some of the toxic content online about men needing to be dominant and women submissive? Christian, Muslim, atheist, whatever, that nonsense is all the same.

Not anti-Muslim, just anti- useless controlling manchild stomping his little foot over the kids having some festive joy

But Muslims don’t celebrate Xmas and he’s well within his rights to say he doesn’t want to and he’s not comfortable with it even if he was before. He’s entitled to change his mind. The children can experience‘festive joy’ with Eid. Christians don’t have the monopoly on joy

Father Christmas is actually from Turkey (St Nicholas, Bishop of Demre)!

I've come across this attitude that your dh has. I realise it's hard to have someone in your home who is actively trying to sabotage all the nice things about Christmas. All I can suggest is that you completely ignore him. If he doesn't like it, he should absent himself for the period 23 December to 2nd January. You enjoy yourselves and he can sulk alone.

Just pick and choose the bits you enjoy. We are no religious but take the bits we like. Christmas gifts and dinner but don't do church etc. Eid we do a feast to celebrate but avoid the fasting/prayer bits, Diwali just do the fireworks. There's no need to lose sleep about this stuff.

Tell him to shut the fuck up and go and get a tree.
Every muslim I know celebrates Christmas, tree, turkey (loads of halal ones in the supermarket) presents, the lot.