Why This Year's Iranian New Year is Different

In March, Iranians celebrate Nowruz, otherwise known as New Year. But this year is different. Kamin Mohammadi explains

As I sat bleary eyed peering at the drizzle, an announcement on Radio Four surprised me. In the early part of the Today programme, presenter Mishal Hussain wished all Iranians a happy Nowruz – a happy new year. In the forty-four years I have been in the UK, this is the first time that Nowruz has merited a mention on the morning news programme, and, on this white wintery day, it gladdened my heart.

Nowruz is the Iranian festival that marks the beginning of spring, and of Iranian new year. Marked on the exact moment of the vernal equinox, we gather together to celebrate the end of winter and the arrival of the new season. Nowruz means New Day, and it feels indeed like the start of new hopes and aspirations, tied as it is to this moment of renewal and rebirth in nature. It is the most unashamedly joyous festival I know, and arguably the forebearer of Easter. This year it was Monday 20 March at 9.24pm in the UK.

Nowruz has been celebrated in Iran for over 2,000 years by everyone in Iran regardless of ethnicity, religion or language, and is celebrated beyond Iran’s borders by the peoples of Central Asia, the Caucasus and other places in West Asia. It has Zoroastrian roots, but it was never a religious festival, occurring as it does at the exact astronomical start of spring, a natural time to mark a new year. When Islam swept across Iran with the Arab invasion, Iranians adapted Nowruz with a Quran on the table and the festival remained intact. In fact, it was adopted as the main royal holiday by the Muslim Caliphate.

Nowruz’ longevity and its continuing popularity even outside Iran is testament to its inclusive and non-religious nature. And to its sheer life-affirming nature. In Iran, for weeks before Nowruz, as the weather starts to change, preparations are made with serious spring cleaning of our houses. For weeks we clear everything out and prepare our new clothes and gifts for our family. We start to grow the wheatgrass that is an integral part of the traditional Nowruz table called the ‘Haft Seen’, watching the shoots come up as winter creeps away and signs of spring start to appear around us. It is hard to recreate the atmosphere of Iran in the lead-up to Nowruz – the scent of hyacinths and narcissus fill the air as people shop and prepare, visiting patisseries to pick up delicate little Nowruz treats: chickpea and rosewater biscuits, baghlava, honey and caramel candies, piles of dried fruit and nuts we call ajil. There are goldfish sold outside every shop – they too are a part of the Haft Seen – and there is music and dancing and general merriment in the air.

The Haft Seen table is a work of great beauty and art. Laid over some days, Iranians take great pride in arranging their Haft Seen, which is laid with symbolic objects: there are seven of them (haft) and they all begin with the Persian ‘s’ (seen). They are:

Sabzeh – the aforementioned wheatgrass or lentil sprouts symbolising rebirth and growth

Samanu – a sweet pudding made from wheat germ symbolising sweetness and fertility

Senjed – dried fruit of a lotus tree symbolising love

Seer – garlic symbolising health

Seeb – apple symbolising beauty

Sumac – a crushed spice symbolising the rising of the sun

Serkeh – vinegar symbolising age and patience

We also fill the table with hyacinths (‘sombol’ symbolising sweetness) and traditionally also a mirror and candles to symbolise the light. The goldfish symbolise life and luck and most of us also place coins (‘sekkeh’) to symbolise wealth. We gather around the Haft Seen in our new clothes at the exact moment of the equinox, the start of astrological Aries (the ancient Iranians were keen on their astrological symbols), and we pray silently, ushering in the new year and the new season with love and peace in our hearts. And as the year turns, we hug each other and greet the New Day by eating sweets (for a sweet year) and exchanging gifts and ‘eidi’ – money laid in the pages of the family Quran which the elder of the family gives and which they urge you to keep all year to bring you wealth.

In these forty-four years of living away from Iran, Nowruz has always been the firmest point of my year, even though we have learnt to love and celebrate Christmas and go carousing on New Year’s eve. However, my internal clock knows that the new year only starts with Nowruz, and in spite of the indifference which always surrounded our weeks of Nowruz preparations in London away from Iran, from late February onwards, a sense of excitement begins to build in me, an energy that sloughs off the lethargy of winter and brings me to the day of Nowruz buzzing with new ideas and plans and projects, ready to take on a new year.

Over the years Nowruz has begun to penetrate the consciousness of non-Iranians in the West and now many of my Western friends wish me a happy Nowruz every year. I spend less time explaining now, less time feeling like a secret alien defying and denying the January new year as more people turn to rituals that celebrate nature, the earth and the seasons. Nowruz in diaspora can never be the same as Nowruz in Iran, which is a two-week long holiday in which you visit all the family, starting with the elders, a fortnight of parties and sweet-eating and dancing to celebrate nature’s renewal that begins the year with unparalleled joy.

This year, Nowruz marks 6 months of protests after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Morality Police, and the thousands of those killed, arrested, blinded, raped and terrorised at the hands of the regime. There will be many painfully empty places at the Haft Seens of Iran’s brave people. We can only hope that this year brings us an end to the darkness of this time and the dawn of a truly New Day in a free Iran. Nowruz pirooz! Woman Life Freedom!

Kamin is author of The Cypress Tree: A Love Letter to Iran and tutor of the Idler Academy online course, “A Brief History of Iran”. Buy the course here. Free for Academy and Digital Academy subscribers.