Of course Eid has a lot of rituals, but there are a few things like this that are special and really make you feel the Eid atmosphere…

1- Staying up until the prayer
We’re all used to staying up late during Ramadan and suhoor, and at the very least nobody sleeps before dawn. Most people prefer to keep going for two or three more hours until the Eid prayer, staying awake and fighting sleep with difficulty, because they’re sure that if they sleep they won’t be able to wake up to pray Eid… and they keep reminding each other that whoever wakes up should call the other to wake him up. And there are many young men and men who are used to pulling an all-nighter in the street from night until after the Eid prayer…

2- The “snakha” after the Eid prayer
You’re usually already awake, and your sleep time is basically gone, so you can continue… The atmosphere in the open prayer areas and mosques wakes you up anyway, whether you like it or not — the happiness of the people, their scent, their cleanliness, their free smiles, the children playing and their noise… All of these are rituals that come along with the prayer, but the most important thing is the “snakha” — you and your group in the surrounding streets, and even better if there’s a group of girls you liked… You don’t really understand what Eid prayer has to do with flirting, but it’s become a fixed thing by now…

3- Breakfast, kahk, and tea with milk
Everyone gathering after the prayer, and breakfast — which is usually made up of a big plate of kahk and tea with milk — whose taste together is like magic and gives flavor to the morning of the first day of Eid… After that, everyone also starts asking for Eid money and negotiating about it…

4- Sleeeeeep
All of this with no sleep, so most likely, if you don’t have guests or aren’t going to visit guests early, you find the whole house asleep for those few hours until after the afternoon prayer so they can keep going…

5- “The Kids Have Grown Up,” “El-Za’eem,” and “Keda OK”

There are veeeeery many plays in the history of art… but only two or three of them have been engraved in our minds as the Eid plays — you have to find them on almost all channels. One channel divides them across the three days: El-Eyal Kebret first, then El-Za’eem, and for the past few years a play called Keda OK entered the game and also became one of the distinctive TV signs of Eid…

If you have other distinctive signs of the first day of Eid in Egypt, write them for us and tell us about them, and tell us which of these five things you did… and Happy Eeeeeid.