HALAL BIHALAL

My neighborhood consists of people from different background and religion; Hindu, Islam, Buddha, and Christian. As we know, every religion has its own big day. Hindu has Nyepi, Islam has Idul Fitri, Buddha has Imlek, and Christian has Christmas. In my neighborhood, there is a kind of tradition that we do on that big days. For example, like last holiday, Moslems celebrate Idul Fitri. At that time, they will hold a “open house”. They invite their family, relatives, including their non-Moslem neighbor to come to their house. They will prepare a lot of food and drinks, such as cakes, cookies, fruit salad or asinan, meatballs, “lontong” plus the “opor”, etc. When my family and I come to their house and congratulate them by saying “Happy Lebaran, minal aidzin wal faidzin” or something, they will serve us, eat, and talk with us. This tradition is called Halal Bihalal. I do like this tradition because we can make us closer as neighbors, we can talk more than usual with our neighbor after getting busy with our activities, and the most important thing is we can get some food for FREE.