Can I spend Thanksgiving with my family?

For many families in North America, Thanksgiving is the one day of the year when everyone sits around the same table. If your family is not Muslim, you might wonder whether you can still be part of it. This lesson explains how scholars look at national holidays, what they agree you can do, and how to make the long weekend about family ties.

Religious festivals and national holidays

In the previous lessons you learned that the majority of scholars hold that Muslims do not celebrate the religious festivals of other faiths. Thanksgiving is a national holiday, and for many families it is mostly about food and being together. Scholars today differ on how to treat days like this:

• Many scholars, including the fatwa services IslamWeb and IslamQA and the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), advise Muslims not to celebrate Thanksgiving as a festival of their own, because Allah gave Muslims their festivals: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. They advise against the day's special customs, such as holding or joining the Thanksgiving dinner as a celebration.

• Other scholars see it as a cultural day and allow joining a family meal, as long as the food is halal and nothing forbidden takes place.

This lesson follows the first, more careful view. If you are unsure what applies to you, ask a scholar you trust.

What scholars agree you can do

Here is the good news: even the scholars who are most careful about the holiday itself say that using the days off to be with your relatives is fine. Keeping family ties strong is something Islam loves.

Keeping your food halal

Whenever you eat with family, the usual food rules apply. Pork and alcohol are forbidden (Quran 5:3 and 5:90), including hidden forms such as bacon in the stuffing or wine in a sauce. Meat also needs to be halal (permitted). If you are not sure about the turkey or another meat, it is fine to kindly pass on it and enjoy the other dishes, or to bring a halal dish of your own.

Gratitude, every day

For a Muslim, giving thanks is not limited to one day a year. Every time you say alhamdulillah (all praise is for Allah), you are thanking Him. Your family may notice that gratitude now fills your whole year, and that can say more about Islam than words.

In the last lesson of this step, you will look at a tender question: making dua for loved ones who were not Muslim.

Scholars today hold more than one view on this question, and no single view is clearly held by the majority. This lesson follows the more cautious view and focuses on what all sides agree on. If you are unsure what applies to you, ask a trusted scholar or the imam at your local masjid.