With spring in our step, let’s celebrate Naw-Rúz

By AK Merchant

It is springtime, a season of rejuvenation in many countries that have severe winter days. This is also a time when two religious communities in 17 countries in Central Asia welcome Naw-Rúz, New Day, also written as Nowruz, the first day of Farvardin, the first month of the Iranian solar year and Bahá’í calendar.

The origins of Naw-Rúz are unknown but believed to have begun as a pastoral fertility festival in Biblical times. Originally a sombre festival dedicated to the spirits of the dead for a five-day period before Naw-Rúz. Later, it gradually became a secular holiday in Iran. Like their Zoroastrian predecessors, Muslim kings in Iran celebrated Naw-Rúz magnificently.

Like Christian Easter, Naw-Rúz is celebrated with many symbols indicating spring and renewal. As per the Iranian tradition, a week or so before the holy day, lentils are placed in a dish to sprout in a mass of green blades. On the day of Naw-Rúz, members of the family gather in new or freshly cleaned clothes. The atmosphere of festivity includes the preparation of delicious cuisine.

A popular custom of Naw-Rúz is the Haft-Sin – the 7S’s. Each object begins with the Persian letter ‘S’ such as hyacinths, apples, lilies, silver coins, garlic, vinegar and rue, decoratively arranged on a table. Much time is spent visiting family relations and friends and exchanging gifts. Naw-Rúz ends on the 13th day with an outdoor picnic and heightened awareness of nature’s gifts. Sprouted lentils are thrown into running water to dispel the previous year’s bad luck.

Naw-Rúz has been incorporated into the Bahá’í calendar, a new system of measuring time and titled the ‘Day of God’ marking the commencement of the first day of the Bahá’í new year. The Bab had envisioned Naw-Rúz festivities to last for 19 days, the first day for the Promised One, Bahá’u’lláh, and 18 days to be associated with the first 18 souls who recognised the fulfilment of prophecies in sacred scriptures.

In writings of the Bahá’í Faith, Naw-Rúz, symbolises new life and spiritual renewal associated with the vernal or spring equinox: “It is New Year, beginning of a cycle of reality, a new cycle, new age, new century, new time and New Year…(May) this blessing appears and becomes manifest in the faces and characteristics of followers so that they, too, may become a new people and…make the world a new world to the end that sword be turned into an olive branch; flash of hatred becomes the flame of the love of God…all races as one race, and all national anthems harmonised into one melody.”

Bahá’ís see this ‘New Day’ as a universal celebration of oneness. UN marked Naw-Rúz as a cultural heritage, acknowledging an ancient spring festival of Persian origin celebrated for over 3,000 years and enjoyed by more than 350 million people, including an eight million strong Bahá’í community, worldwide.

The writer is secretary, Bahá’í Spiritual Assembly of Delhi
International Day of Nowruz is on March 21