{"id":454390,"date":"2010-03-21T07:51:06","date_gmt":"2010-03-21T11:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalvoicesonline.org\/?p=129676"},"modified":"2010-03-21T07:51:06","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T11:51:06","slug":"azerbaijan-reflections-on-novruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/454390","title":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan: Reflections on Novruz"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come… by \u2665 Lala \u2665<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This weekend marked the official start of Novruz<\/a>, the Zoroastrian holiday marking the beginning of spring. Celebrated in many countries where Iranian influence has been strong, preparations started long before<\/a> the actual festival, as last year's post on Global Voices Online<\/em> detailed<\/a>. In Azerbaijan, as elsewhere, Novruz is eagerly awaited and popular among foreigners and locals alike. <\/p>\n

This year, for example, a number of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in the largest of the South Caucasus countries celebrated the event with Lost in Azerbaijan<\/em> providing a thorough introduction to the holiday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Today marks every Azerbaijani\u2019s favorite day of the year: Novruz.<\/p>\n

Novruz takes place on March 20-21st but the entire month prior to today people are preparing and anticipating the holiday.<\/p>\n

Novruz means \u201cnew day\u201d and is the start of the New Year in the Iranian calendar, welcoming spring, new life and a fresh start. It\u2019s technically an Iranian holiday but celebrated by many Islamic cultures. Throughout the past month Azerbaijani\u2019s have been cleaning out and painting their houses, planting trees in their yards, cooking special dishes and visiting friends and relatives.<\/p>\n

During the Soviet Union Novruz was prohibited and people were persecuted for following the traditions. Now all Azerbaijani\u2019s proudly celebrate and look forward to this time of the year.<\/p>\n

The four Tuesdays prior to the holiday each have a name: Water (to purify), Fire, Wind, and Earth (new life). On each of these evenings at dusk families make small bonfires in their yard and everyone takes a turn jumping over the fire seven times reciting \u201cGive me your redness and take my yellowness\u201d which means \u201cTake my hardships, give me your lightness.\u201d […]<\/p>\n

Perhaps the symbol most associated with Novrus is the sprouted wheat called \u201csamani\u2019. These grass seeds are grown on a plate prior to Novruz and can by close to half a foot tall on the holiday. Each family usually places the samani on the center of their table with a red ribbon tied around it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Happy Novruz! Happy Spring, everyone! Wishing you peace, health, prosperity and wonderful new beginnings! by AZ Cookbook<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Aaron in Azerbaijan<\/em> tells his readers that they're “missing out on the knowledge of a tradition that stretches back a few thousand years, in dozens of countries throughout Asia<\/em>” on the last Tuesday before Novruz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Last night was the last Tuesday (\u00c7\u0259r\u015f\u0259nb\u0259) of Novruz. That means that Miri, my host mom, and a random friend, Orxan, set about jumping over fires (for Novruz, you celebrate each of the four Tuesdays leading up to March 20\/21. […] Apparently, you\u2019re supposed to jump over fire seven times, so we lined up seven piles of the straw-type stuff and lit \u2018em up. We jumped over each one and I did a few extra rounds for folks who weren\u2019t here to enjoy the fun of jumping flames. […]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In last year's post about Novruz on Global Voices Online<\/em>, one Armenian commented and noted the similarities<\/a> between the holiday and her own Trendez, another Zoroastrian holiday absorbed and changed by the Church<\/a> when Armenia adopted Christianity in 301AD. <\/p>\n

This year, the similarities prompted an interesting discussion on Twitter<\/em> between an ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani.<\/p>\n

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Indeed, in her own post, Ianyan <\/em>comments on Novruz, detailing the shared cultural influences in the region as well as her own personal identity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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I would be lying if I said that I solely identified myself as an Armenian. With my family from Tehran and a maternal grandmother from Tabriz who spoke Armenian, Farsi and Turkish, I have as much Iranian influence running through my veins as I do Armenian and American.<\/p>\n

My parents grew up during a time in Iran when life was good. […]<\/p>\n

As Armenian as they were, they were also Persian and everything – from the food, to the music, to the traditions have been passed down to my sister and I in the most charming way. Not because it was forced, or written into our daily lives, but because we were genuinely interested.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

To me, being Armenian doesn\u2019t symbolize an all inclusive club where only one set of traditions are observed and one language spoken. We are an amazingly diverse group of ancient people, who have, through the years, influenced and been influenced by a set of beautifully rich and magnetizing cultures, and denying this would be doing a disservice.<\/p>\n

I guess what I\u2019m trying to say is that simply speaking, diversity is good. Embrace it. […]<\/p>\n

Happy New Year!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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the haft sin table\/ \u00a9 ianyanmag<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come… by \u2665 Lala \u2665 This weekend marked the official start of Novruz, the Zoroastrian holiday marking the beginning of spring. Celebrated in many countries where Iranian influence has been strong, preparations started long before the actual festival, as last year's […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-454390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}