1. The smell. Morbid. Fecal. Smell—Everywhere!

2. Call me an infidel, but I just can’t bring myself to make merry at the idea of mass murdering a few hundred thousand cute, furry, unsuspecting farm animals in a span of 72 hours… and that too publically, in front of a sadistically gleeful audience.

3. All the Bar-B-Q talk. Show some sensitivity, people!

4. The never-ending shower of personal questions—often from people you’ve never even met before: Are you slaughtering a goat or a cow? How much will you be spending this year? Only two days left, dude, where’s your animal?
Seriously guys. I’ll get whatever I want, whenever I want—and the fact that I’ll probably only be able to afford an undernourished skinny midget cow is my business and my business alone!

5. How everyone, including some highly intelligent Einstein-type adults, go brain-dead a week before Eid and spend a good 15 hours every day just staring at their animal. Poor thing’s bound to get the heebie-jeebies!

6. Eid morning—help me God if I have to leave the house and witness the genocide… which I always do, with unviable expectations of remaining all Zen at the sight of blood and gutted animals.

7. Becoming a vegetarian for a couple of weeks. Especially if you’re the kind of person who actually looks forward to your weekly steak and hamburger meals.

8. How the true essence of the tradition is lost on most of us— People would gladly spend bundles of cash on four goats and two cows at Bakr-Eid so they can feed their own greed & gluttony by stuffing their deep-freezers to full capacity, but go berserk if a truly deserving person should ask them for a little meat to feed his hungry children some other time during the year.

9. How some parents think watching Jackie Chan act like a nincompoop in a movie is bad influence for their kids, but watching four blood-soaked men brutally attack, slaughter, skin and butcher an 800 pound cow—live—is healthy entertainment!

10. Post Bakr-Eid dinner parties with red-meat dishes in great abandon. How very subtle!