Tonight is the longest night in the northern hemisphere, where most of humanity inhabits. Tomorrow, Earth axis is the most oriented away from the Sun which marks the “winter solstice”.
Called “Chelleh“ or “Yalda”, tonight, has been celebrated by Iranians since more than five millenniums ago. It was first as the birth of the Indo-Iranian goddess “Mitra” in the ancient Persia (which was later associated with Sun), and then as a Zoroastrian religious fest. Nowadays, it’s a social occasion where families and friends gather around and stay together, keeping the fire (or candles) burning through the longest night until the sun rises again, reading poems and eating nuts, watermelon and pomegranate.
p.s. Persian Calendar, like the Gregorian calendar, is solar. Moreover its important dates are inspired by nature rather than human made historical events. For us, today was the last day of autumn and winter started tomorrow, not because one out of billions of humans had birthday or another took over a dynasty and took power. Only astronomy.
p.s. Many thanks to Negin Ehtesabian for that two years ago she made this copyrighted illustration for this blog and I finally use it now. 🙂
Nim, I enjoyed this post ..
nice blog.
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Thanks Saba,
I liked your shots as well.
Good article bud! We both know that all of the Iranian ceremonies and events are nature related and they’ve got much to do with seasons. That’s amazing but what should we do as Iranian in southern hemisphere where all the philosophy goes wrong? For example Norooz is the beginning of Autumn and Yalda is the shortest night in the year. This makes me feel less connected to those glorious ceremonies and Im really worried about my kids that they won’t feel that anyway!
Its same for others as you see shops are decorated with snowmans in the hot summer for Christmas.
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Get your a.s.s. back and come to the northern hemisphere with or without cubs dude!
as stupid as you look still can’t be;ieve my eyes looking at that painting omg stupider