Happy New Year Norooz 1396


Again and again we have the opportunity to celebrate a Happy New Year, we are blessed to have so many cultures in our country that designate different times of the year as the beginning. So we can begin again now. I am just now discovering a new holy day I never knew about and I love it. Thank Ed and Nahal for sharing and permitting me to share here too.

My dear cool rocker friend Ed Hale wrote this on his Facebook page today about sharing the New Year with his gorgeous wife, Nahal, who is from Iran. I am delighted to share it here because what he said exemplifies Heaven is Here and E Pluribus with a state of mind of celebration and unity. You all know I am passionate about that.

“So here’s the thing about marrying a Persian… As a society we in the West have evolved to a place where we celebrate, or at least acknowledge, several of the various “New Year’s” holidays of some of the different cultures that comprise our great melting pot. We just recently welcomed in the Chinese New Year of the Rooster…. And many of us are used to celebrating the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, every year.
Persians use the Spring Equinox as their New Year. Some of us are already accustomed to this as it is one of the major shabbats of the various different pagan or Goddess-based religions like Wicca, High Magic or Witchcraft, globally always called Ostar — which of course is the foundation for the origin of the more recent “Easter” celebration the Christians adopted from it (having absolutely nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with bunnies and eggs…)
BUT… Persians, in their effort to stay more committed/honest/sincere/true/faithful/(fill in the blank), literally wait to celebrate the Spring Equinox at the exact time that it takes place wherever and whenever they are on the earth at the time. So for us this year, being in New York, that moment can at 6:28 am. Which means one wakes up at least an hour before to partake in all the rituals associated with this beautiful celebration.
As some know, your’s truly didn’t go to bed last night till 2:00 am… so yes, I… am…. TIRED. BUT this holiday to a Persian is literally like Christmas is to a Christian. So there’s no sleeping through it. You wouldn’t even consider it.
One of cool things about it is that once we count down the New Year, just as we do in the West on December 31st at midnight, we take calls from all over the world ? and each of these people are in a totally different timezone. Friends and family from CA and Vancouver are calling from 3:30 am, from Europe at 12:30 pm and from Iran and the Middle East at 3:30 pm. No matter where or when we are we’re all doing the same thing. It’s pretty cool.
With that, I’m going to curl up here and try to catch a few more winks before we officially start the day. Happy Norooz everybody! May PEACE and LOVE find a way to dominate our world regardless.
-Ambassador”

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Beautiful photo by Nahal Hale.