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Uneventful Eids, Present and Future: An American convert talks about the lack of fanfare around Ramadan.

Many of us in the US were raised with the typical western/Christian holidays and the traditions that go along with those run deep. In my many years as a Muslim, I honestly have yet to have an Eid that I’ve truly found to be a special event, and believe me I’ve tried…

Sing it, sister. Some psycho behind my house has put up his Christmas lights already, probably as a joke. I find it festive, if a bit over the top. It's not even Halloween.

Rest assured we will receive Halloween cards. We'll get cards on Valentine's Day, too, as well as Easter, no matter how many times I try to explain that Christmas is okay but Easter not so much. Even St. Patrick's Day is hard to miss, at least in Boston. But Ramadan? That could pass by undetected. I had to e-mail my sister-in-law in Cairo to ask her when it began. She looked it up for me, in Arabic and then in English. (Who knew there was a whole web site devoted to moon sightings?)

I remember the first day of Ramadan last year, I was in a hotel in Phoenix where they didn't start serving breakfast until 6 a.m. I set my alarm for 5:45, ordered early, but even so the sun was creeping up by the time I'd poured syrup on my pancakes. What to do? Abandon ship? I finished quickly and told myself the letter of the law was less important than the spirit of the thing, a rationalization I will use again and again as I try to shake off old habits. Lunch that day — I was at a conference — was heavy on the ham and bacon, and I sat outside doing my best to ignore the smell. Bacon has positive connotations for me, breakfasts with my family on mornings relaxed enough that someone bothered to cook. I like the sound of the sizzle.

Strange the things that can make you feel guilty.

There were 450 people at the conference. 448 of them inside, 2 outside: me, and the keynote speaker, who was sitting across the garden going over his notes. He was a light-skinned African-American man, early 40s, wearing a baggy white shirt. I tried not to eye him over the brim of my book. Suddenly he stood up, gathered up his papers, and as he walked inside he stopped in front of me.

"Sister, why do you look so sad?"

"Sad?" I asked, startled. I wanted to explain that I wasn't hiding, that I was fasting, that I was new to this, doing my best. But I didn't want to have to explain that it was Ramadan, didn't want to get into a defense of Islam, a description of the thirteen years spent as Interested Observer and why and how that changed last April, a justification of my non-veiled white girl self sitting on a bench flanked by plastic plants. Too much detail, and at any rate I am not a good ambassador for this particular cause. Would he even know what Ramadan was?

He held out his hand and I took it. "It will be okay," he said, and squeezed my wrist.

I followed him inside, watched him climb onstage, and as the din of the room quieted he took up the microphone and greeted his audience: "Salaam aleikum," he said, almost under his breath, and then began his speech in earnest.

I had apparently misjudged him.