Eid and the Art of Gratitude

By Theresa Rézeau Each year, as Ramadan draws towards its close, something subtle begins to change. Markets grow livelier, homes prepare for guests, and families anticipate the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of a month devoted to fasting, prayer and reflection. Ramadan is built on a rhythm that is both demanding and transformative. From dawn until sunset, Muslims abstain from food and drink, turning their attention towards prayer, charity, patience and humility. At first glance, fasting might appear simply as an act of restraint. Yet it can also function as a form of spiritual recalibration. By stepping away from daily comforts, individuals become more conscious of gratitude and of needs that ordinary abundance can make easy to overlook. As the final days of Ramadan arrive, anticipation of Eid begins to grow. But unlike celebrations built purely on indulgence, Eid carries a deeper emotional resonance. The joy of the festival is inseparable from the journey that preceded it. Discipline gives meaning to celebration. Across cultures and centuries, this pattern appears again and again. Periods of reflection and labour culminate in communal expressions of gratitude. Agricultural societies developed harvest festivals after months of work in the fields. Religious calendars often place feasts after periods of fasting or abstinence. Such cycles remind communities that abundance is not merely something to consume, but something to acknowledge. Eid belongs to this ancient human rhythm. Yet it also emerges from the distinctive religious, aesthetic and cultural traditions of Islamic civilisation. Islamic cultures have long placed profound importance on beauty. In many Islamic sacred contexts, figural representation has traditionally been limited, encouraging the development of an extraordinary visual language of calligraphy, geometry, vegetal ornament, architecture and light. These forms do not attempt to depict God. Instead, pattern, proportion and the written word can create environments that invite contemplation. One of the most striking modern expressions of this tradition can be seen in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. Completed in 2007, the mosque draws upon multiple Islamic architectural traditions while incorporating contemporary materials and engineering. Its white domes rise against the desert sky, while arcades, pools and vast expanses of marble create a striking interplay between monumentality and stillness. During a visit there some years ago, I remember standing in the courtyard as evening light began to soften the brilliant stone surfaces. The immense scale of the architecture was immediately striking. Yet what remained most memorable was not simply the size of the building, but the atmosphere it created. Despite the presence of visitors from many countries, the space carried a sense of calm. People moved slowly, lowering their voices almost instinctively. The architecture seemed to encourage reflection without needing to demand it. Sacred architecture has performed this subtle function across cultures and centuries. Medieval cathedrals, Buddhist temples and Islamic mosques differ profoundly in theology and tradition, yet each demonstrates the capacity of architecture to shape human behaviour. High ceilings draw the gaze upward. Repeated patterns establish rhythm. Light moving through windows or across stone alters our perception of space and time. The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque accomplishes this with remarkable elegance. Its vast courtyard is covered in white marble inlaid with monumental floral mosaics designed by British artist Kevin Dean. Irises, tulips, lilies and roses unfold across the surface, their stems and blossoms rendered in coloured marble and semi-precious stone. Rather than appearing as isolated decoration, the flowers spread across the courtyard as though growing through the architecture itself. The repeating arches and domes establish another visual rhythm, extending across the architecture with a sense of order and continuity. Such architectural language can be understood as expressing a recurring principle within Islamic aesthetics: beauty, order and harmony as ways of contemplating creation. During Ramadan, that contemplation moves beyond architecture and into daily life. Fasting is accompanied by prayer, self-restraint, generosity and heightened attention to one’s actions. Eid then becomes the moment when the discipline of the preceding month gives way to communal joy. The day traditionally begins with communal prayer, often held in mosques or large open spaces. Families dress for the occasion. Children receive gifts. Relatives and neighbours visit one another, and tables fill with food prepared for the celebration. Yet even within this joyful atmosphere, the ethical principles cultivated during Ramadan remain present. Before the Eid prayer, Muslims give a charitable offering known as Zakat al-Fitr, intended in part to ensure that those in need can participate in the celebration. The practice carries a powerful moral idea: gratitude cannot remain entirely private when others are excluded from abundance. Art can carry a similar relationship between beauty, memory and responsibility. Great works of art do more than decorate walls. They preserve memory, transmit values and allow human experiences to travel across generations. A painting, manuscript or building may survive the society that created it while continuing to speak through the ideas embedded within its form. Islamic calligraphy demonstrates this particularly powerfully. Rather than relying upon sacred figures, Qur’anic manuscripts transform written language itself into visual beauty. Letters stretch and curve across the page with extraordinary precision. Ink becomes ornament. Words become architecture. Among the most celebrated surviving examples is the Blue Qur’an. Leaf from the Blue Qur’an, showing Sura 30:28–32. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Dating from the second half of the ninth to the mid-tenth century, the manuscript is written in luminous gold Kufic script on deep indigo-dyed parchment. Scholars generally associate it with North Africa, possibly Qairawan in present-day Tunisia. The visual effect is both dramatic and serene. Gold letters appear suspended against an expanse of blue so deep that the pages seem almost nocturnal. There are no narrative scenes competing for attention. Instead, colour, proportion and calligraphy create an atmosphere of extraordinary reverence. The Blue Qur’an also offers a visual metaphor through which to consider Ramadan. The deep indigo suggests an interior space of quiet and reflection. Against it, the gold script emerges with startling clarity, light appearing from darkness. Fasting similarly alters attention. Ordinary habits are interrupted. Hunger and thirst make the body impossible to ignore, while prayer and reflection redirect attention beyond it. What is usually automatic becomes deliberate. By the arrival of Eid, what has been cultivated privately becomes communal. Heritage, after all, does not survive only in museums. It survives because people repeat it. A prayer learned from a parent is spoken again. A familiar dish returns to the table. Clothes kept for special occasions are brought out once more. Children receive gifts and, years later, recreate some version of the same rituals for families of their own. During Eid, these acts become a form of living memory. The objects may change and customs may differ across countries and generations, but the act of gathering carries something forward. Art does this too. A manuscript survives because someone preserved it. A building survives because generations continued to enter it. Their materials endure, but so do the gestures they invite: reading, looking, walking, pausing, remembering. This is one reason sacred architecture can remain powerful even for those who do not belong to the faith that produced it. Standing in the courtyard of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque that evening, watching the fading light move across the marble, I recognised something familiar. At the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. Encounters with sacred architecture often reveal how reverence can transcend cultural and religious boundaries. I come from the Catholic Christian tradition. I knew the instinct to lower one’s voice on entering a sacred space, the way the body seems to slow before the mind has instructed it to. I knew what it was to look upward into an architecture designed to redirect attention beyond oneself. The mosque was not a cathedral, and I did not need it to be one. Its theology, visual language and traditions belonged to Islam. What felt familiar was something more elemental: the use of beauty to create the conditions for reverence. Architecture, light, pattern and silence worked together to make attention possible. Eid carries that attention back into everyday life. When the end of Ramadan is determined according to the Islamic lunar calendar, messages begin to pass between families, friends and colleagues. Eid Mubarak. Blessed Eid. The greeting contains more than congratulations. It carries a hope that the discipline, generosity and attentiveness cultivated during Ramadan will not disappear when the fast ends. Festivals endure because they interrupt the ordinary flow of time. They give communities a reason to gather, remember, reconcile and celebrate what everyday routines can cause us to overlook. After a month of fasting, prayer, charity and reflection, gratitude becomes visible again in shared meals, new clothes, gifts for children, generosity towards those in need, and the simple act of gathering together. The discipline of Ramadan gives way to celebration. And, like gold emerging from the deep indigo pages of the Blue Qur’an, what has been cultivated quietly is finally brought into the light.

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