Thursday of the Dead

Thursday of the Dead
Observed by	Arab Christians and Muslims in the Levant
Type	Popular feast day for women
Significance	Honours the souls of the dead
Celebrations	Festive family meals and the giving of food, coloured eggs and sweets to the poor, relatives and children
Observances	Prayer, visiting cemeteries
Date	On a Thursday that falls between the Easter Sundays of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions
Frequency	annual
Related to	Easter, particularly Holy Thursday; possible relation to springtime Nebi Musa festival

Thursday of the Dead (Arabic: خميس الأموات‎‎, Khamis al-Amwat), also known as Thursday of the Secrets (Arabic: خميس الأسرار‎‎, Khamis al-Asrar) or Thursday of the Eggs is a feast day shared by Christians and Muslims in the Levant. It falls sometime between the Easter Sundays of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian traditions. It is a day on which the souls of the dead are honoured. A popular day among women in the region, it underscores the shared culture between Arab Christians and Muslims.

In Julian Morgenstern's The Rites of Birth, Marriage, Death, and Kindred Occasions Among the Semites (1966), Thursday of the Dead is described as a universal day for visiting tombs, engaged in most assiduously by townspeople, followed by fellaheen ("peasants"), and then Bedouins. Women would go to the cemetery before sunrise to pray for the departed and distribute bread cakes known as kaʿak al-asfar ("the yellow roll") and dried fruit to the poor, to children, and to relatives. Children would also receive painted eggs, generally yellow in colour.

The sharing of this tradition between Christians and Muslims is thought to date back to at least the 12th century when Saladin urged Muslims to adopt Christian customs in order to promote religious tolerance in the region. Anne Fuller sees in it "that ancient Near East belief that the living as well as the dead form a single community."

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Wikipedia