Happy Persian New Year

Sunday, March 20th 2005, at 7:33:24 am (Eastern Standard Time), is the begining of the new Persian year, Norooz. Indeed it would be the 1384th year in the Persian calendar. The whole official things in the country will be closed for about 13 days. I sort of missed such long and joyful holidays.

Persian calendar is based on the Earth's orbit around Sun and it goes back to centuries before Islam coming to Iran. Its root is in old Zoroastarian belief that wanted to make the new year in the begining of the new life in nature, begining of the spring. Here is a research in the old Persian calendar.

One of the traditions, originated in some thousand years ago, is to begin the year near each other, and behind a table with certain things (see figure), called Haft-Sin, i.e. Seven "S", because there would be seven things in the table starting with the persian letter "S".

Two years ago, Google had changed its logo, in Persian New Year. I hope happy days for everybody on this year.