Nowruz Mobarak!

Nowruz Mobarak!

I've already established the precedent of marking holidays, greeting my Muslim readers on Mawlid al-Nabi and my Jewish readers on Purim, so I might as well stay consistent and wish a happy Nowruz to every reader who celebrates the ancient Persian New Year.

It's a pretty broad brush: Iranians, of course, and Kurds, Afghans, many Turks, a lot of other folks where greater Persian civilization once held sway up into Central Asia, and members of a number of religions — Iranians of all varieties, but also Parsees (Zoroastrians) everywhere (who invented the holiday), Baha'is, Syrian ‘Alawites, Turkish Alevis, Albanians of the Bektashi Sufi order (thank you, Wikipedia, I didn't know about that one) — and doubtless many I'm leaving out.

Nowruz is, of course, simply the vernal equinox celebrated as the new year. Until the 18th century many British legal documents considered March 25 (roughly, before the shift to Gregorian, the vernal equinox) as the new year. There's something to be said for starting your year in the spring, when buds are budding and flowers are coming up, instead of in the dead of winter, as Western calendars now do, or the fall (Rosh Hashonah, Coptic New Year), or moving around the calendar (Muslim Ra's al-Sana). To any Iranians and all those other categories reading this, a happy Nowruz. We can all use a "new day," which is the literal translation.

Nowruz pirooz.