email contact

Monday 8 March 2010

New Year Preparations

The whole of the country is now in the grip of pre-Nowruz fever in anticipation of the beginning of the New Year. This is the highlight of the year for all Iranians, who prepare for it in various ways: externally by spring-cleaning and refurbishing their homes and shops and buying new clothes and shoes and internally, by settling old scores, making friends with those they may have differences and resolving to improve aspects of their lives in the new year.

Shops are extremely busy, especially in the afternoons and weekends, and some of them remain open round the clock in the last weeks of the year.

The exact moment of the transition from the old to the new year is the result of precise astronomical calculation: Saturday 20 March, 21:02:13 Iran time, 18:32:47 GMT.

This is an extract from Among the Iranians: A Guide to Iran’s Customs and Culture, (to be released in the UK on 25 March and in the US on 1 April):

“About ten days before the New Year the women of the family soak lentils or wheat until they sprout. Then they spread them on a plate and cover them with a piece of gauze which is kept moist. Until New Year day the sprouts have grown to a height of about ten centimetres, when they are tied around with a red ribbon and become one of the main items, the sabzeh, on the New Year spread.”
When Hossein’s parents were still with us, all their children and grandchildren arrived at their house just before the change of the New Year. Maman jun put an embroidered piece of fabric on the floor in the middle of the room and laid the New Year spread on it, every object from the natural world an anchor of an abstract ideal. She put her wedding mirror and candlesticks for purity, light and joy in the New Year, took out one of her goldfish from the pool and brought it in a bowl to represent freshness and got her grandchildren to decorate some eggs in a symbolism of new life. In keeping with tradition, she had to have seven items whose names begin with the letter “s” in Persian: sabzeh (green herbs), serkeh (vinegar), seer (garlic), seeb (apple), samanou (a paste similar to halva made of germinated wheat), somaq (sumac, a sour spice used in kebab dishes) and senjed (dried lotus fruit) or sombol (hyacinth flower).

Although Nowruz is not an Islamic feast and it is celebrated by Iranians of every religion, its celebration has been fused in the Iranian psyche with the worship of the one God and Islam, so most Iranian Muslims also place the Holy Quran on the New Year spread too and read a special supplication (Du’â Sâl-e No) in Arabic.”

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.