Photo Credit: Pouya X

Light is good. Therefore, the god of light must be good, right?

I think you have to love any god that gets you an all-night celebration; the longest night of the year, no less. That’s what Mithra’s birth did to give us Yalda. The God of light conquers darkness for us on December 21st. You can have your dried nuts and fresh fruits. You get to hang out with all your friends and family to celebrate. All the wonderful things that come with Shabeh-Cheleh are finally here. I’m finding out now exactly why it’s here, and what the meaning is behind all these very Persian rituals.   

Mithra, the Sun God, is the symbol of light, goodness, and strength on Earth. Yalda is the eve of his birth; Shabeh  (Night of Yalda). It’s been celebrated for over 5,000 years. He was a pretty powerful god in his time. He fought on the side of Ahura-Mazda, the good guys, in the eternal struggle against the side of Ahriman, the bad guys. There was a time when Mithraism, a cult of sorts, was a widely followed religion. From this, there are those that have argued that Mithra was a prototype for Jesus Christ himself. While I have no opinion either way on any truth behind this claim, it does help drive home a point later in my article. But I digress.

The Iranian calendar was based upon the end of the solar year. Yalda is the last day the month of Aazar (December), and the next day is the first day of the month of Dey (January). The days begin to get longer in Dey, hence the victory of light over darkness. As you can imagine, much has changed in the nature of the celebrations of Yalda over the millennia. 

The coolest thing to me about the old celebrations has to be the temporary reversal of roles. A mock king, or Lord of Misrule (awesome name), would be crowned, as the real king joined the peasants. They would have huge masquerades and party all night until the sun came up and it was time to restore order. I think I like that so much because it’s hard for me to imagine a king that would be willing to do that. Not that I know any kings, but I guess the Persian ones are the coolest.

Along with this submersion of order, some more familiar parts of the celebration were also present from the beginning. The dried nuts and fresh fruit I mentioned earlier are integral symbols that have always been important to Yalda. The fruits were especially difficult to keep fresh in those days. It was the responsibility of the elder in the family to care for and ensure they would be present on this out-of-season holiday.

Of all the fruits, the most important has to be the pomegranate. It is prominently displayed as a symbol of the cycle of life. The purple outer covering represents birth or dawn, and the bright red seeds represent the glow of life. The other fruits served on Yalda night are symbols of freshness, warmth, love, kindness and happiness.   

The winter solstice celebrations of the Persians and the Romans had many elements that we continue to see today in other cultures. The traditions of exchanging gifts and decorating homes with greenery were adopted into a familiar holiday popular in America and celebrated right around this same time. That’s right, Christmas. As the birth of Christ began to be celebrated, and after some finagling of the date on which it was to be celebrated, many of the traditions of Yalda were taken and made into part of the Christmas holiday; The gathering of friends and family, the exchanging of gifts, and the trees and greenery decorating the home were all seen as swell ideas ripe for the replicating. Not that anyone wanted to steal these ideas, but they must have known a good party when they saw one.

I won’t pretend to know why, aside from tradition, Yalda is celebrated today. It seems like just a good excuse for a party from what I’ve gathered. That’s great. I love a party. It’s just that, as a lazy American, I have seen this with the celebration of Christmas. It’s well documented in many Christmas television specials I’ve watched, that the true meaning of Christmas is often lost upon us. The love and compassion for our fellow man often take a back seat to commercialism, and who can put up the best looking lights in the neighborhood.

And while I know Yalda is far from the corporate wet dream Christmas has become, I would caution everyone to keep this in mind as they celebrate. Take an extra moment at your party, as you listen to the poetry of Rumi and Hafez, to look around and soak in all the lovely people you’re with, and remember how lucky you are to have those people in your life. In the end, we probably won’t have a day celebrated in our honor for ages. What we will have, are these memories; the ones that help us gather meaning to our own lives.