Ghosts greeting me at St. Jude (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
Today, when I stepped inside of the Children’s Cancer Center (St. Jude in Beirut)for my afternoon shift, I thought I had lost my mind. Hanging from the ceilings in all directions were fresh Halloween decorations–even though we had celebrated Halloween in October, and all of the hospital decorations had disappeared from the halls the following week. So who had put them back up, I wanted to know–and why?
“Why are there Halloween decorations all over the place?” I asked one of the nurses.
“Oh, it’s for Burbara,” she said, “Lebanese Halloween.”
Eid el-Burbara (or Saint Barbara’s Day), she explained, is a holiday celebrated on the 4th of December in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. The decorations and rituals associated with Halloween (pumpkin-carving, costume parties, trick-or-treating) also feature prominently in celebrations of Eid el-Burbara in the Levant. The holiday is named for St. Barbara–who was forced to flee the persecution of the Romans after converting to Christianity.
“Yeah, people say she wore different masks to disguise her face when she ran from the Roman soldiers,” one of the volunteers added–as we started playing a game of Hangman in French with two bored but cheerful teenagers (one from Damascus and one from Beirut).
St. Barbara is considered the patron saint of miners, army engineers and mathematicians. To learn more about the traditional foods and rituals being prepared to celebrate her feast day later this week, please click here.
