How Palestinians Celebrate Eid: Kaak, Ma'amoul, and the Rituals That Survived Exile
In a pre-1948 Palestinian village kitchen at four in the morning on the day of Eid, a grandmother is already shaping ma'amoul (معمول). Her hands move around a small wooden mold: a pinch of dough, a spoon of date paste, a press, a gentle tap, and the cookie falls onto the tray. The house smells of nigella seeds and rose water. By the time the sun rises and the family leaves for Salat al-Eid, hundreds of cookies will be stacked on brass trays, covered in white cloth, waiting for the visitors who will come for the next three days.
This is how Palestinians have celebrated Eid for centuries, and it is how diaspora families still celebrate it now. The Palestinian Clothing collection exists in part because of this Eid: the new clothes every Palestinian child has worn to every Eid prayer since before anyone can remember.
Two Eids, Two Meanings
TL;DR
Palestinian Eid celebrations, observed at both Eid al-Fitr (the feast ending Ramadan) and Eid al-Adha (the feast of sacrifice), are built around a set of food traditions, communal prayers, and family rituals that have remained largely unchanged across generations and across the Palestinian diaspora. The central foods of Palestinian Eid are ka'ak (كعك), a ring-shaped cookie flavored with anise and sesame, and ma'amoul (معمول), a molded shortbread filled with date paste, walnuts, or pistachios. Both are made in large quantities in the days before Eid, with families often gathering to prepare them together. In Palestinian households, baking ka'ak and ma'amoul is as much a social and memorial act as a culinary one: the recipes are passed verbatim from grandmothers to daughters, from refugee camp kitchens to diaspora apartments in Amman, London, and Detroit.
There are two Eids in the Islamic calendar. Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, and is typically three days. Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, commemorates the prophet Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son, and is typically four days. Because the Islamic year is lunar and shifts back about eleven days each solar year, both Eids move through the seasons over time. In 2026, Eid al-Adha falls on May 27. In Palestinian tradition, both Eids are family-first occasions, quieter than they are sometimes imagined from the outside.
Kaak and Ma'amoul
The two sweets that define a Palestinian Eid are kaak and ma'amoul. Kaak bi-ajwa is a ring-shaped cookie filled with date paste, glazed with a light egg wash, and dusted with mahlab or nigella seeds. Ma'amoul are small buttery shortbread cookies pressed in a wooden mold, filled with date, walnut, or pistachio, and dusted with powdered sugar after baking.
The molds are the inheritance. A Palestinian grandmother's wooden ma'amoul mold can be a hundred years old, smoothed by use, carved with shapes that identify her family's village. Some molds are round, for date filling. Some are domed, for walnut. Some are elongated ovals, for pistachio. The shape tells you what is inside without cutting the cookie open.
The Rituals
The rituals themselves are simple, and they have not changed much. Before sunrise, families wash, the men dress in clean clothes, and the family walks together to the neighborhood mosque for Salat al-Eid, the Eid prayer. After the prayer comes the cemetery visit: families walk through the graves of their relatives, placing flowers, reading Al-Fatiha, remembering the dead. From the cemetery, the day moves house to house. The oldest living relatives are visited first, then the aunts and uncles, then the cousins. At every stop, coffee and kaak, then ma'amoul. Children are given eidiya (عيدية), small amounts of money from every adult relative, carried in stiff new envelopes.
New clothes for everyone, especially the children, are non-negotiable. In pre-1948 Palestinian villages, families saved through the year so that children would have something new for Eid, even if the "new" was only a freshly embroidered dress passed carefully from a cousin.
Regional Variations Before 1948
Eid looked different in every part of Palestine. In Jaffa, the port city had Eid processions along the coast, and the sweets were often flavored with the citrus blossom water distilled from the surrounding orchards. In Nablus, the old city's sweet shops sold knafeh by the kilogram on the first morning of Eid, and families who could afford it paired it with the traditional cookies. In Haifa, Eid was a multi-confessional affair, with Christian neighbors joining the visits and Muslim neighbors reciprocating on Easter. In Hebron, the Eid feast centered on lamb and rice. In Bethlehem, the Christian-Muslim proximity meant the Eid sweets often shared recipes with Easter ka'ak.
These regional variations are mostly preserved now only in family recipes.
Eid in Exile
In the diaspora, Eid is a careful act of preservation. In Amman, Dearborn, Santiago, and Montreal, Palestinian families bake kaak weeks in advance, sometimes shipping them in suitcases to relatives who can no longer travel to Palestine themselves. Grandmothers on video call coach granddaughters through the semolina-to-butter ratio. Wooden molds carried across four generations are still in use, sometimes in kitchens where the cook has never seen the village that the mold's pattern came from.
The Palestinian Key is a symbol of return. A ma'amoul mold, smoothed by generations of hands, is a quieter version of the same thing. For further reading, Reem Kassis's writing on Palestinian food heritage and the Institute for Palestine Studies archive of village life are strong starting points.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do Palestinians eat on Eid?
The two most traditional Palestinian Eid foods are ka'ak (كعك), a ring-shaped anise-and-sesame cookie, and ma'amoul (معمول), a molded shortbread filled with date paste, walnuts, or pistachios. Both are prepared in the days before Eid in large quantities, and families traditionally gather to bake together as an act of communal memory. These foods appear consistently across Palestinian households in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, the Gulf, and the wider diaspora, serving as edible markers of shared cultural identity.
How do Palestinians celebrate Eid?
Palestinian Eid celebrations begin before dawn with preparation, then the Eid prayer (Salat al-Eid) at the mosque or in open community spaces. Families visit relatives in order of seniority and exchange sweets, particularly ka'ak and ma'amoul. Children receive money or gifts called Eidiyya. The day involves multi-generational family gathering centered on food, prayer, and hospitality. In Palestinian villages before 1948, Eid also included communal music and sometimes dabke dancing performed in village squares.
What is ma'amoul?
Ma'amoul (معمول) is a Palestinian shortbread cookie made in a carved wooden mold, called a tabi (طابع), that presses decorative patterns into the dough before baking. It is filled with date paste, walnuts, or pistachios, with the shape of the mold indicating the filling. It is the most traditional of Palestinian Eid sweets, prepared across Palestinian households and communities worldwide. The carved wooden molds are often passed through generations as meaningful family objects, connected to the broader Palestinian food heritage.
At FALASTIN, we aim to keep that tradition alive through our Palestinian Clothing.
100% of profits from FALASTIN are donated to the United Palestinian Appeal.