WATANI International
25 September 2011
“An Egyptian feast—neither Christian nor Muslim—which gathers together Egyptians of various beliefs,” such was the way Culture Minister Emad Eddin Abu-Ghazi talked to Watani about the Egyptian New Year Day.
“The call to honour the event was launched by the late Bayoumi Qandil. In 2007, I wrote an article in the Cairo daily al-Dustour strongly in favour of the idea. The Egyptians Against religious Discrimination (MARED) movement endorsed the notion as a serious step in the direction of consolidating the concept of Egyptian citizenship as opposed to religious differences between Egyptians. The idea was to look for what unites rather than what divides.
“We ought to distinguish,” Mr Abu-Ghazi stressed, “between the calendar of the martyrs, which began in 283AD and which has a very strong Christian bearing, and the Egyptian calendar which was there ages earlier and which was based upon the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians regarding the time and astronomical cycles.
“And yet it may be worth reminding that the Coptic New Year was officially celebrated in Egypt during Islamic times and until the Mamluk era in the 17th century. The Fatimids, in the 10th century, used to celebrate Christmas, Epiphany, and the Coptic New Year.”
Mr Abu-Ghazi has been calling, since 1996, for declaring the Coptic New Year Day, as well as Christmas and Easter national holidays. The Hijra New Year Day, The Prophet Mohamed’s Birthday and the Islamic Bairam feasts are already national holidays.
Watani asked Mr Abu-Ghazi what he expected to come out of his call to honour the Egyptian New Year Day in the future. He laughed: “This is a very difficult question at the moment,” he said. “Egypt is passing through a transitional period and the future is very ambiguous. All we can do is fight for what we believe in and hope for the best.”
