Tabaski in Benin

We’ve had an opportunity to celebrate this holiday season by singing carols and baking cookies. We are also thankful for all of the Christmas cards, boxes, and birthday cards for Sonya and I, especially from our family and LINKS churches. It has been good to read the Christmas e-mail newsletters from friends around the world. We also had the opportunity today to celebrate a Happy Tabaski.



Tabaski is for goats-sheep-rams what Thanksgiving is for turkeys. For most Beninese it is a day off from school or work. For Muslims, it is Eid ul-Adha, or Tabaski as it is called in West Africa—the “Feast of the Sacrifice.”



The Feast of the Sacrifice is one of the largest celebrations of the year in Islam. It coincides with the Hajj—where 2 million Muslims are making pilgrimage to Mecca this week. The meaning of the feast concerns Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Ishmael, according to the Qu’ran. The Hebrew Scriptures tell a different story in Genesis chapter 22:1-19.



We don’t talk much about animal sacrifices any more. In the culture of the Hebrews it was important. The idea of sacrifice gave much significance to Jesus’ death on the cross, and the meaning of His death is spelled out through the imagery of sacrifice in the New Testament book of Hebrews. For West Africans, animal sacrifice is quite common today. In fact, the appearance of avian flu in Benin this month creates a concern, according to a recent article from Reuters, among voodoo priests and priestesses that regularly sacrifice chickens as well as goats in their ceremonies.

Link to the article: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL1720456620071217?sp=true



The slaughtering of a ram is a main focus of Tabaski. In Senegal a cell phone company or a bank gave away Tabaski rams for a promotion—sign up for an account and earn the chance to win a ram. So, Tabaski is why we woke up this morning to five rams in our neighbor’s garage. The garage smelled very much like a state fair, and still does this evening. We have to walk through their garage to get to stairs leading to our office-guesthouse located above their house. While an electrician worked on our generator in the guesthouse, I watched our neighbors slaughter the five rams on the street in front of the house. I didn’t stick around to see them finish the process, but some other neighbors around the corner already had three rams “dressed” and hanging in front of their house by 11:00 a.m. One significant aspect of this sacrifice is that the Muslim making the sacrifice should give a significant portion of the sacrifice to the poor. I wonder how we could incorporate the idea of sacrifice into the Advent season . . .