Halal for the holidays: Food sales show many Muslims participate in Christmas, Thanksgiving

The first time Saima Khan and her family got a Christmas turkey, they could not see what all the fuss was about. But it had nothing to do with being British Muslims new to the traditions of the season.

They just like good meat–so they decided to produce and sell their own at their farm in Essex, England. Two years on, sales are strong of their halal turkeys, which aside from being slaughtered unstunned, are produced the traditional British way: being dry plucked by hand and left to hang.

The business only produces a small number of turkeys each year, Mrs Khan says, but they could sell them many times over. She suspects that is at least in part due to a rise in popularity of the season among young British Muslims.

“Last year we went out and personally delivered the turkeys around East London, and what we found was the people that I took the orders from on the phone were second and third generation [immigrants], and when I got to the address where they told me to deliver the turkey, you would get the elderly mums coming out who haven’t ever cooked a turkey but [are preparing a traditional British meal] for the sake of their children who wanted to do it,” says Mrs Khan. “So that is what is happening. The next generations want to try this.”

Abraham Natural Produce, another halal meat producer, is also experiencing a rise in demand for Christmas turkeys among its customers.  

“Obviously they are not going to mass or doing religious rites, but Christmas dinner has become synonymous with living in the UK,” says Muhsen Hassanin, the company’s sales manager. “You have hardline people in the [Muslim] community who say you shouldn’t do it, but then you have the other way, where you say ‘what do I do when my auntie wants to come round, and it’s the only time when everyone is off?’” 

The view seems to be gaining ground in the United States, too, where an increasing number of Muslims are now marking the holiday, according to news reports. The exact number of Muslims who celebrate Christmas in the U.S. is not known, but according to a 2012 study by Pew Research Centre, 81 percent of non-Christians celebrate the holiday season. 

And, while Muslim-centric holiday products have yet to arrive on major retailers’ shelves, some holiday novelty items, like shirts and ornaments, can be found on crowdsourced Internet retail sites like CafePress and Zazzle.

Saffron Road, a U.S. halal food producer, does not sell turkey products, but it has a range of appetizers and dessert items which experience a 100 percent spike in sales at Christmas. More than 70 percent of its consumers are not Muslim, so it is not clear whether the rise is because more Muslims are buying the items.

But Adnan Durrani, the founder and chief executive of the American Halal Co, which wholly owns Saffron Road, says many Muslim Americans, like himself, celebrate holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“Thanksgiving is a very American holiday,” says Durrani. “In terms of Christmas and New Year, it is very much part of the social fabric in the U.S. Most Muslims I know in the U.S. very much enjoy celebrating some of these holidays with their friends or relatives.”

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