December 23, 2001
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EHRAN, Iran, Dec. 22 — Iran is 99 percent Muslim. But on Friday night, people across the country celebrated the feast of Yalda, an ancient holiday going back to an earlier religious era, the age of Zoroastrianism. The feast marks the winter solstice, the longest night of the year by one minute. For Iranians, it is a night of eating, celebrating and telling stories until the early morning.
Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest faiths, dating from sixth or seventh century B.C. to the seventh century A.D., when the conquest of Islam reached the Middle East. It was one of the world's first monotheistic religions. As the official faith in ancient Persia, Zoroastrianism considered life and the universe in a form of cosmic dualism, a constant battle between good and evil.
Today, the Zoroastrian community in Iran has dwindled to perhaps 100,000, but its traditions have survived all political upheavals, even the arrival of Islam. On Yalda evenings, families of all faiths gather at an elder's house to celebrate the start of longer days and prepare for a cold winter.
Daytime was considered good by Zoroastrians because it was a time for work as opposed to the evening, during which people had to light fires to keep evil spirits away. The dawn represented victory of good over bad, an opportunity for work, which deserved to be celebrated.
For Yalda, families feast on nuts, dried fruits, watermelon and pomegranates. Zoroastrians believed that watermelon could keep people healthy in the wintertime. The red seeds of the winter pomegranate symbolized liveliness and joy.
In the last week, shops around the country displayed signs advertising watermelons preserved in industrial refrigerators. Newspapers carried front-page pictures of the feast from previous years. Iranian state television on Friday broadcast a special program about the Yalda feast. After midnight, a popular actor, Jahangir Almassi, read poetry, sitting behind a table that held flowers, pomegranates, nuts and a chopped watermelon.
Bahar Malek's family, which is Shiite Muslim, has always celebrated Yalda. Ms. Malek is 34 now; when she was younger, her family gathered at the home of her grandfather, Ali Akbar Malek, himself a poet. She still remembers sitting with 20 other family members and listening to her grandfather reading Hafiz, a popular 14th-century Persian poet, or the Book of Kings, 10th-century poems of Iran's greatest epic poet, Abolqassem Ferdowsi. After all, she said, Yalda is a night on which Persian heroes must be celebrated.
On Friday, at a table lit with candles and decorated with bowls of fruit, Ms. Malek's father read Hafiz's poetry to the family. Her mother had made Ab-goosht, a rich traditional soup made of meat and beans, to keep everyone awake until dawn. Ms. Malek's aunt Farah Rowhani, 53, a dedicated Shiite, believes that Yalda is a holy night and that if she makes a wish then, it will come true. Last year she prayed that Ms. Malek would get married, and she did. This year, Ms. Rowhani prayed that her son would get married.
"I ask God, for the sake of Ali, our innocent saint who became a martyr, make my son get married to a fine woman by next year this time," she said, referring to Imam Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, who is regarded by Shiites as a martyr. She added that Islam, too, is important and that it helps wishes come true on that night.
