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Date: August 25, 2019 10:00AM
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2018/05/07/michigan-ramadan-trees-islamic-dearborn-muslim/582403002/For Samar Baydoun Bazzi, the Ramadan Tree grew out of a desire to mark the Islamic holy month with festive cheer.
Growing up as a Muslim in the U.S., Baydoun Bazzi, 29, of Dearborn said she noticed a lack of decorations during the month-long holiday, which Muslims observe by fasting from sunrise to sundown to commemorate the revelation of the Quran to the prophet Muhammad.
“Obviously, Ramadan’s important,” Baydoun Bazzi said. “You gotta pray and fast, and you want to become closer to your creator. But I never as a kid felt like there was any decorations or like a celebration. I wanted something exciting.”
When she became a mother, she decided to take matters into her own hands and create the kind of Ramadan experience she wished for as a child.
She began by decorating her west Dearborn home with Islamic-themed art, like acrylic paintings of Arabic calligraphy and a cardboard model of a mosque.
It wasn’t enough.
So in 2014, she said, she decided to put up a Christmas tree.
It didn't last long.
“Oh, Christmas!” Baydoun Bazzi remembers her daughter Zahraa, then 4 years old, shouting.
“I knew that it was a mistake,” Baydoun Bazzi said of her decision. “So I looked at my tree and decided to take it apart.”
That’s when the Ramadan Tree first took root.
In her basement, Baydoun Bazzi, a mother of three, takes artificial Christmas trees and twists and bends them into the shape of a crescent moon, a universal symbol of Islam, whose religious calendar is based on the lunar cycle. Ramadan, which marks the ninth month of the Islamic year, begins May 16 and ends June 14, according to the Islamic Society of North America.
The first crescent tree took her 20 minutes to make and it “died,” Baydoun Bazzi said. Now the trees take her anywhere from two to five hours to shape because she wants to ensure they’re stable and won’t fall apart.
They go quick.
Since January, she has sold about 40 trees, which cost $150, come in two colors, forest green or white, and come with lights and an ornamental star of either five or eight points.
Baydoun Bazzi currently has about 20 people on the wait list and said she gets more orders every day as Ramadan approaches. She hopes to get the trees manufactured in the future, which she says would be "a lot quicker."
The trees can be shipped at a cost, said Baydoun Bazzi, who has sold to customers in Chicago, Virginia, New York and Minnesota.
She has gained customers by word of mouth. It started with family, Baydoun Bazzi said. Then with friends of family and their friends' friends. People saw the tree and began bringing her their own trees to have her reshape them. Baydoun Bazzi also operates private Facebook and Instagram accounts for the tree.
But Baydoun Bazzi isn't the only local Muslim building holiday trees.
Suzanne Jaber, 44, of Dearborn Heights started making her Crescent Moon Trees in 2015, and uses them to celebrate Islamic holidays year-round, including Ramadan, Eid al-Adha, and Mawlid al-Nabi, the prophet's birthday.
Jaber, a mother of four, lived part of her childhood in Lebanon, where she says they used to decorate the house with a "New Year Tree" around Christmastime and said that her children had always wanted a Christmas tree.
“It wasn’t foreign for us to put a Christmas tree in Lebanon," Jaber said. "So when we came here, we did put it for few years, but when I got married, I didn’t put one because I always thought if my kids weren’t good religious enough, their kids and, you know, maybe their other generations, they put a Christmas tree, they would think they’re something else other than Muslim.”