Nowruz: A New Year Older Than Most Calendars

Nowruz — literally "new day" — marks the exact moment of the spring equinox, when day and night fall into balance. Its roots are usually traced to Zoroastrian tradition, and some accounts place it even before the Persian empire itself — though like much from that period, the exact origins are debated rather than precisely dated. What's not in question is that it never stopped being celebrated, even through the many political and religious changes Iran has gone through since.

At the center of the celebration is the haft-sin table — seven symbolic items, each starting with the Persian letter 'س' (s): sabzeh (sprouted wheat or lentils, for rebirth), senjed (dried fruit, for love), sib (apple, for beauty and health), sir (garlic, for medicine), somaq (sumac, for the sunrise), serkeh (vinegar, for age and patience), and samanu (a sweet wheat pudding, for fertility and abundance).

Families spring-clean their homes beforehand (khāne tekāni, literally "shaking the house"), visit relatives during the holiday, and often don't return to daily routine for close to two weeks — Nowruz isn't a single day so much as a whole season of renewal.

Today it's celebrated far beyond Iran's borders — across Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Central Asia, and Persian diaspora communities worldwide — and UNESCO has formally recognized it as part of humanity's intangible cultural heritage. Three thousand years on, it's still just as much about family and fresh starts as it ever was.