The Persian New Year

Although there are plenty of eid’s in the Iranian calendar, they are mostly Islamic festivals celebrating things like the end of Ramadan or the end of the Hajj (pilgrimages to Mecca). The real let-your-hair-down, boogie-boogie stuff is concentrated into the period of Nowrooz (literally New Day), the Persian New Year. Its origins pre-date Islam by at least 2000 years. Originally a Zoroastrian festival (although, as with Saturnalia and Christmas, elements of the newer religion, in this case Islam, have been woven into it) it always falls on the day and at the precise time of the Spring Equinox, so that one year it might be at an inconvenient 5.13 a.m., and the next a rather more civilized 12 noon. At the time of writing, the year is 1386 – the years are worked out using the lunar calendar and dating from Mohammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina in ad622.