My country, Indonesia is a Muslim majority country therefore the Ramadhan / fasting month is a huge occasion here and it had impacted the country culturely even for the non mulims. One of the tradition that it made was the 'breaking fast together' which is basically a dinner gathering. During this month, people used the opportunity to gather around the breaking fast time. Alumnis, friends, and mostly companies will havbe a dinner gathering that are usually scheduled around the second and third week of fasting.
In other countries, many companies usually have their annual dinner gathering around december or January but in Indonesia most big companies will have it in the Ramadhan month, some companies might also have another one in the end of the year but a gathering in teh ramadhan month is usually a must, unless the company had zero muslims or a minority of it.
I happenned to work at a place with muslim majority workers even if the owners are not. This week alone I had attended three gatherings, one by a senior supervisor, one was just a gathering of four friends wherein two of them are muslims and just yesterday it was my company gathering. There are two more invitation for next week, one by my manager and another by a marketing executive.
So... what are the importance of these gatherings?
First of all, companies or higher ups in the companies will hold it as a form of saying thanks to the employees.
Second, this is a good excuse for friends and alumnis to gather, though I don't know why.
Third.... well sometimes it can be used as somekind of competition and to boast. I remember just last year every division manager tried to out do each other by hosting dinner gatherings at hotels. Also, who doesn't boast on alumnis gatherings?
fourth, connection connection connections. When you get invited to one, you know that they regard you as someone they need to invite.
To be honest, sometimes I find the reasons for these to be very sad. Though it is not my religion, it is sad to see people using it to create soemthing else instead. When we are fatsing, it is important to concentrate on our relationship with God and shed off more of our worldly clothings but people seemed to try and 'reward' themselves by having lavish breaking fast events.
Of course, not everyone are like that. Some of these gatherings are merely purely because people want to gather together and share the joy of their fasting.