People of Homs celebrate Traditional Sweets' Day

(Reporting by Amr Al Hamawi; Translation by Yusra Ahmed)

People of Homs city used to celebrate in these days of each year of Eid of Halawa, or the dead Eid, in which they buy big amounts of Homsi Halawa, the city's traditional sweets, and distribute them to poor people and religious chanters and Quran readers in the graveyard when they visit their dead ones.

Halawa's Eid is a unique Homsi tradition as it is the only one among the Syrian cities celebrate the day, when over 3 tons of Halawa is sold. It has been known for hundreds of years.

Abo Ahmad, a Homsi man displaced to the Northern countryside described the Eid Saying: “in such Thursdays, old city of Homs used to get covered with bright colors of while and pink, distinctive to Homsi Halawa, while shops’ windows were full of the two colors cones of Halawa”.

Abo Ahmad mentioned that other kinds of sweet are sold in this Eid like Khobziyeh, Bashmiyeh, and Simsimiyeh, besides the plain or stuffed Raha.

Abo Ahmad explained that celebrating Halawa Thursday started long time ago at Mamluks’ times nearly in the second half of the 19th century. "It is one of the 7 Thursdays Homsi celebrate which are: The lost, the Shanona, the Mad, the cats, the plants, Al-Halawa and the Sheiks Thursdays."

In regard to determining the date of the Eid, Abo Ahmad explained that it is related to Easter according to Eastern Christians' calender, as it is the very prior one before Easter's Sunday.

Despite the pain Syrians in general, and Homsi in particular feel, they still celebrate the day because it is part of Homs’s traditions. Moreover, Homsi people in Egypt celebrated the day in the city of 6th October, where sweet shops owned by Syrians were full of cones of the “Red Halawa” as an attempt of them to keep the Eid in the mind of children and bring happiness to them.