Among the forbidden practices, too, is to abandon one’s regular occupations—whether crafts, business dealings, study circles, or the like—then treat that day as one of rest and celebration, taking to horse-play or other amusements in a way that distinguishes it from the days before and after.

The guiding principle is that nothing new whatsoever is to be introduced; the day is to be left exactly like all other days. We have already related that the Prophet ﷺ forbade the two days the people used to celebrate and play in during the Age of Ignorance, and that he ﷺ prohibited slaughtering at a place where the idolaters were holding a festival.

Another example is what many people do in mid-winter, on the twenty-fourth of December: they claim it to be the birthday of Jesus—peace be upon him—and everything introduced on that occasion is reprehensible, such as lighting fires, preparing special foods, making candles, and so on. To treat that birthday as a festival belongs to the religion of the Christians; it has no foundation in Islam. The earliest generations never mentioned this birthday at all. Its origin was taken from the Christians, and to it was added a natural factor—namely, that it occurs in winter, a season suited to kindling fires and to certain kinds of food.

The Christians also allege that some days after the birth—about eleven days, as I recall—John baptized Jesus, peace be upon them both, in the waters of baptism. They therefore baptize themselves at that time and call it the Feast of the Baptism (Epiphany), and many ignorant women have begun to enter