Nowrüz, Persian New Year in Konstanz.

I bet not many reading this blog got to attend a Persian New Year celebration. I did! In Konstanz, Germany.

Nowrüz the Persian New Year celebration originated as a Zoroastrian religious festival.  It is a celebration of joy and hope and optimism.  And believe me folks the Zoroastrians can give the Irish a run for their money when it comes to a history of misery, and more misery on top of that misery! 

    

So that their Persian descendants  can dance and sing and float about with such color and sparkle is to be admired.  And the food -  don´t get me started on the food.  YUMMY in big neon lights.  I had what I thought was a wonderful buffet dinner.   Only to be told when I could not eat another thing, that ´those were just the starters, we will eat dinner now!` All in German, of course.

The Persians for various reasons - lots of them being miserable reasons which again makes me marvel at their joy, now live all over the world.  There is apparently a very big Parsi community in Los Angeles. - Who knew!    Parsi, for those not in the know, are people who come from Persia.  And Persia used to be what is now modern day Iran. -  Got it!   (* See comments posted from Marianne L added below for important clarification)

As you can see I only know enough about Nowrüz and all things Persian to be dangerous, suffice it to say:

 a) The Parsi seem to be a very welcoming inclusive sort of  people as there were many people from many different places at their New Year´s celebration.  

b) They all seem to talk about some ceremony where every one jumps over a fire, this seems to include day old babies, and  old people who have to be dragged out of wheel chairs to go jump over said fires.

c )  The woman are gorgeous - and the men are almost as gorgeous! 

After that can I suggest you just look at the photos below and on Wikipedia or your information source of choice to find out more about this cultured, welcoming, joyful people.

And did I say ´Where there are Iranians, there will always be yummy food!`

* Feedback on Norwürz posting from Marianne:
From reading your article, someone might think that the terms "Iranian," "Persian," and "Parsi" are all interchangeable, but they're not.  While Parsis are of Iranian/Persian descent, they form only one subgroup, the one that chose to leave Iran over 1,000 years ago in order to avoid converting to Islam.  This group settled on the Indian subcontinent, and continued to practice Zoroastrianism.
Other Iranians/Persians do not refer to themselves as Parsis.  Those who remained in Iran converted to Islam, and the majority of Iranians today are Muslims, although there is a sizable group of Jewish Iranians, many of whom live here in New York.
For these non-Parsi groups, if they celebrate Nowruz, I believe that they think of it more as a cultural tradition, and I'm not sure that the link to the religion that their ancestors practiced many centuries ago is obvious to all of them.