Celebrations > Norooz > NOWRUZ: THE IRANIAN NEW YEAR HAS TRULY GONE GLOBAL BY DAVID RAHNI
Why we ALL wear symbolically colorful outfits
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By all accounts the number of special events commemorating Nowruz has
proliferated worldwide in the past decade. Credit, by and large, +goes to the persistent
75 million Iranians in Iran and their transplanted counterparts now residing in
every corner of the world, who have persevered to preserve their cultural heritage
by adhering to their New Year’s rituals.
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The Iranian New Year, Nowruz
is now celebrated by 300 million inhabitants in Central, South and
Southwest Asia, North Africa and Eastern Europe. More specifically, it is as if Nowruz
has become the symbolic nostalgic commonality that integrates peoples from as
far away from IRAN as Xingjian’s
northwest China and Himalayan foothills of Kashmir, India and Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia
and Georgia and the surrounding smaller republics in the Caucuses and Caspian
Sea regions, Turkey, Albania, Iraq and the Kurdistan regions, the Persian Gulf sheikdoms
and sultanates, as far west as Egypt. This
brings back the memories of the Achaemenid Dynasty, circa 2,500 years ago, when
30 nations
were equal members of the federal government of Cyrus
and Darius and observed Nowruz. Tens of millions from the nations
above in the west, especially three million from Iran-one
million in the U.S. alone-commemorate Nowruz
with much exhilaration. Incredulous as
it may seem, a version of the vernal
equinox was celebrated in the west and the U.S. throughout the 18th
century as the “common” New Year.
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