Nowruz marks the first day of Spring or Equinox, as the beginning of the year in the Persian calendar. The festival is celebrated on the day of the Northward equinox, when the sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes night and day.

Nowruz means ‘new day’ in Persian and is the most important festival of the year in Iran. It is also celebrated in a number of other countries across the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, the Balkans and East Africa, and dates back at least 3,000 years.

It is not a religious holiday but rather a universal celebration of new beginnings: wishing prosperity and welcoming the future while shedding away the past. That is why families use this time to deep clean their homes and closets and buy fresh clothing.

People prepare a special table in their homes, where they place small dishes holding seven symbolic foods and spices. The names of these foods all start with the letter ‘s’ in Persian and so the table is called the ‘seven s’s’ (haft-seen). The dishes generally contain wheat or bean sprouts (sabze), vinegar (serke), apples (sib), garlic (sir), a wheat-based pudding called samanu, a red spice called sumac, and senjed, a kind of wild olive which is common in the region. Other symbolic objects can include goldfish, painted eggs, candles and a mirror. The seven s’s symbolize life, love, health and prosperity.

Happy Nowruz 2020! 

Pictures courtesy of Penn State Harrisburg’s Persian New Year celebration.