Newborn Baby Care and Needs

Posts Tagged ‘Celebrating a Newborn Baby’

Goat for Aqiqah

Aqiqah, Moslem Celebrating Newborn Baby

 

By Najiah N

To show our grateful to God for having a newborn baby is by an Islamic practice of shaving the hair of the newborn baby boy and contributing the weight of the hair shaved in gold for charity as well as slaughtering 2 lambs. One lamb is slaughtered for a newborn baby girl.

This practice is done on 7^th day or 14^th day or 21^st day of the newborn age. But there is a dispensation for those who aren’t materially capable yet, by doing this practice anytime as they like, as soon they have the money.

The Aqiqah ritual begins with slaughtering the lambs with certain prays for the newborn, praying that the newborn will become a good person, then cutting the hair of the newborn that will be weight and exchange the weight of the hair by the price of the gold and giving it for charity. Cutting the newborn baby hair is done by the elders of the family like grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts. After that parent will shave the whole hair, so they newborn can grow a new hair. The lambs that were slaughtered will be cook and give for charity, for everyone, for the poor, hoping that they’ll give their good prays for the newborn.

Nowadays, in Asian countries, like in Indonesia, there are catering services that will help a family do this ceremony, from choosing good healthy lambs, cooking them, and then preparing all the meal utensils, and then at the end, they will also do the cleaning up. The menus serve for this ceremony usually are ’sate’, lamb curry, grill lamb, or one menu which is my favorite ‘Kebuli Rice’. There aren’t any certain rule on the menu, may be you would like to create you own menus, it would be acceptable.

This ceremony can be held at the parent home, at a mosque, or at an orphanage, the important point is to share the meals with everyone, family, and those who need them, like the poor.