Druze in Lebanon

Relationship with Lebanese Christians

Druze and Christians in Lebanon celebrate each other's births, weddings, funerals, and celebrations such as Christmas, Maundy Thursday and Easter, especially before and after the Lebanese Civil War. Thursday of the Dead is a feast day shared by Christians and Druze in the Lebanon. It falls sometime between the Easter Sundays of the Catholic and Eastern OrthodoxChristian traditions. It is a day on which the souls of the dead are honoured. A popular day among women in the region, it underscores the shared culture between ArabChristians and Druze in Lebanon. The baptism of children in accordance with Christian custom was usually in large, well-known Lebanese Druze families. In the period of Egyptian rule in the Levant in the 1830s, many Druze converted to Christianity to avoid enlistment into the Egyptian army, according to historian Aharon Layish there is also explicit evidence of Druze in Lebanon under the Ottoman rule posing as Christians for practical reasons.