The holiday I'd like to describe is Independence Day in Pakistan, which falls on the fourteenth of August. Last year I spent it at home in Faisalabad with my parents, my two sisters and my nephew, who was five at the time.
The day started early. My father has a tradition of raising a small flag on our roof at sunrise, and this time my nephew was allowed to help, which he took extremely seriously. Then we had a big breakfast of halwa puri, and my sisters and I spent the morning decorating the front of the house with green and white bunting. In the afternoon we watched the parade on television, and in the evening we drove to the main square to see the lights and fireworks, although the traffic was so bad that we ended up watching most of them from the car.
I enjoyed it a lot, and to be honest more than I expected, because as a student I'd usually treated the holiday as just a day off to sleep in. That year was different because of my nephew. He kept asking questions like why the flag is green and what independence means, and I realised I had to think about the answers properly. My father told him stories his own father had told him about 1947, which I'd never paid attention to before. So in a way I learned more about my country's history that day than in school. It felt like the holiday actually meant something, and I'd like to keep those traditions going.