Nowruz, the spring festival celebrated this Sunday in many countries of the ancient Persian Empire and far beyond, is celebrated at the precise moment of the spring equinox by more than 300 million people.

Nowruz, the Persian spring festival, an anthropological mystery

Israelis dance during a party celebrating Nowruz, in Tel Aviv, Friday, March 19, 2021. The party was broadcast live from Tel Aviv to Iran on Iran International TV.

Shai Filer, the organizer, said the party was meant to "celebrate the human connection that will hopefully bridge political divide".

AP - Oded Balilty

Text by: Léopold Picot Follow

7 mins

Dating back thousands of years, this holiday is of interest to anthropology for what it reveals about the patterns that underlie human traditions.

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This Sunday, March 20, 2022 at 3:33:26 p.m. precisely, in universal time, hundreds of millions of people around the world will celebrate “Nowruz”.

This will be the case in Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and also in part of India, among others.

How to explain the universality of this pagan festival at the time of monotheistic religions?

Salvatore d'Onofrio is a professor of anthropology at the University of Palermo, and a member of the laboratory of social anthropology at the Collège de France, founded by Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Four years ago, this Italian specialist published a book devoted to Nowruz, one of the most ancestral festivals of Humanity.

Entitled

The Morning of the Gods.
From Persian Nowruz to Christian Easter

(2018, Édition Mimésis), he demonstrates that the rites practiced during the Persian New Year, which reach their apotheosis at the precise moment of the vernal equinox, are closely linked to patterns of thoughts that bind human societies through time.

A strange coincidence

I discovered the existence of the Nowruz holiday almost by chance, in 2015

," says the anthropologist.

At that time, he was reading

The Gardens of Adonis

by Marcel Detienne, a great Hellenist.

The author describes festivals taking place in Greece in the 5th century BC.

Athenian women celebrated the god Adonis through ceremonies that took place on terraces and during which green shoots, symbols of renewal, had a central place.

SABZEH DAY 12: I doubted and fretted.

I shouldn't have.

Keep watering;

keep chasing the light.

#botpsabzeh2022 #Nowruz pic.twitter.com/oCkdpIGiHZ

— Naz Deravian (@bottomofthepot1) March 17, 2022

However, these plants are at the center of rituals in the Mediterranean, as in southern Italy or in French Provence, in Sardinia or Lebanon, but also and above all in Iran and in many other regions that have been part of the Persian Empire.

They are one of the main symbols of Nowruz.

Intrigued by these similarities, Salvatore d'Onofrio approached the Iranian diaspora to study the pagan festival: “

I did not try to trace the possible paths of these shoots from an origin.
I rather tried to compare the different rituals of these shoots from the Iranian tradition where they are present everywhere despite religious differences.

Two weeks of celebration

Nowruz is a very codified holiday.

On the eve of the last Wednesday of the year before the spring equinox, the

Sharshanbe Suri

takes place : people jump over fires to purify themselves.

A tradition that resonates with the fires of Saint John.

“

In Paris, for the Sharshanbe Suri, groups of children banged on pans and went to see people to ask them for cakes or coins.
It almost makes you think of Halloween!

smiles the anthropologist.

The traditional “haft sin” table to celebrate Nowruz at the Zoroastrian Cultural Center in Paris.

Siegfried Forster / RFI

In homes, the day before Nowruz, a table is set with

seven elements, called

Haft Sin.

These are germinated seeds of legumes or cereals, called

sabzeh

and symbolizing rebirth, as well as six other elements which also begin with the letter S of the Persian alphabet: garlic, apples, vinegar, coins golden, depending on the region.

Nowruz ends thirteen days after the equinox, with the

Sizdah Bedar

, a picnic.

The shoots are then thrown into the water of a lake, a river or the sea, to symbolize the beginning of a new cycle.

Multiple echoes in the world

These sprouts, so symbolic, caught Salvatore d'Onofrio's ears.

During his research, he realized that they were found everywhere.

In ancient Greece, as shown by Marcel Detienne, where in addition to the shoots, fire is also present on the roof terraces, as some Iranians do for the

Sharshanbe Suri

We also found in a village in Sardinia, in Barbagia, this gesture of throwing the shoots into the sea after having transported them on land

", he marvels.

In Paris, while focusing on the Iranian diaspora, the anthropologist takes part in another celebration: that of the feast of Ganesh, important for the Indians and which takes place in August.

“

This ritual with fire and sprouts, we find it in Paris.
The groups of women who parade for the feast of Ganesh have on their heads a basket carrying sprouts and fire… It is quite extraordinary to see that the same gestures are repeated in the French capital, the same ones that existed in the 5th century before our era in Greece and among the Persians of all times.
Traditions spread.

Potential customers for the purchase of sprouts for Nowruz in Tehran on March 17, 2021. AP - Ebrahim Noroozi

The more the anthropologist digs, the more the symbol returns: Claude Lévi-Strauss evokes the use of bean sprouts among the Hopi, Indians of Arizona, for Rosh Hashanah;

every year, Jewish women cultivate sprouted seeds;

the men of medieval families in the West twirled shoots on the heads of their children which were then thrown into the river.

These examples highlight that despite their differences, men do the same thing and show the importance of traditions as operational patterns of thought

", sums up the anthropologist.

The importance of renewal, of agriculture, of birth, of the cycle of life... the interpretations of the symbol are multiple.

And

what about

the number 7, which is found in many beliefs around the world, including Nowruz?

No question of falling into hazy theories, but rather trying to imagine why this figure influences popular beliefs so much.

The anthropologist has his hypothesis: “

My theory is that this fascination for the 7 comes from generations.
In the majority of cases, only seven generations are known.
Ours, those above us, and those below: father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter.
It is a universal thing that would explain why all the peoples of the world have been inspired by this figure.

An influential tradition still little studied

Nowruz also shows the normative force that tradition can have.

Among those who have adopted it, the Iranian New Year is immutable.

The festival, even though it is pagan, has always resisted the pressures of religions.

In Iran, the regime of the Islamic Republic tried to make it disappear because it did not appear in the Koran.

It's a waste of time: the Iranians always celebrate it.

“

Nowruz is celebrated in Iran by Sunni Muslims as well as Shiites, by Christians, by Jews, despite all religion

”, describes the Italian anthropologist.

In the diasporas, Nowruz also takes on a special meaning.

A way to celebrate your culture, while being aware that the country is far away.

This is also what marked Salvatore d'Onofrio the most when he was studying Nowruz in Paris: “

Party is mixed with melancholy, you can touch it, you can feel it.
I have participated in Sizdah Bedar several times and the expression of joy mixed with the sadness of being immigrants, who sometimes cannot even return to their country, is very moving.

Nowrouz, (or "Nowrouz", "Navruz", "Nauryz", "Nawrouz", "Nevruz", "Nooru", depending on the country where you are), by its power to evoke a common imagination, has managed to survive for thousands of years the upheavals of past societies, inspiring and drawing inspiration from multiple influences.

The complexity of the patterns that underlie it makes it an important subject of study, but still little explored by anthropologists, even if Salvatore d'Onofrio hopes that one day one of his colleagues will take over from his work.

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To read also:
Iran celebrates Nowruz and Charshanbe Suri, the fire festival

Nowruz, the Persian spring festival, an anthropological mystery

Nowruz, the Persian spring festival, an anthropological mystery

A strange coincidence

Two weeks of celebration

Multiple echoes in the world

An influential tradition still little studied

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