So am I totally off base here?

[onager]

19. Egypt's Weird Spring Holiday

Sham el-Nessim, which literally translates as "smelling the breeze."

Not really that weird, I guess - Egyptians go on picnics and eat, among other things, colored hard-boiled eggs. And a truly vile fish-dish, salted gray mullet. Trust me, you don't want to be smelling the breeze from anyone who's been eating that stuff.

When I lived in Egypt, it was fun to see people out on that holiday. Most went down to the Nile to celebrate with a picnic. Or out in the villages near my workplace, they went down alongside the irrigation canals. Everybody always seemed to be smiling and having a good time, from toddlers to the very elderly.

Why it's sort of weird:
--The holiday goes all the way back to ancient Egypt and has never been Islamicized...
--...even though it became linked with Coptic Christianity after the rise of that religion in Egypt, and is dated from the Coptic Easter holiday
--Egyptian Muslims celebrate it along with everybody else. It's a national holiday.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sham_el-Nessim