A first Nowruz to remember: what Persian New Year taught me about renewal

This spring, as the first daffodils pushed through the cold North East soil, our home filled with the scent of herbs, rice, and rosewater. It was baby Cyrus’s first Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and for once, it was time for a break from work and half-finished washing.

Nowruz isn’t just a date on the calendar; it’s a philosophy. It arrives with the spring equinox, that fragile moment when day and night sit in perfect balance. And maybe that’s what drew me in, because in midlife, we crave our own equinoxes, those rare pauses that remind us balance isn’t found, it’s made.

Light over darkness

The celebrations begin with Chaharshanbe Suri, a fire festival on the last Wednesday before Nowruz. Across Iran, people leap over flames chanting for their paleness to be replaced with the fire’s warmth and energy. Watching my husband explain this to our tiny son, I saw more than tradition, I saw resilience passed from one generation to another. To leap over fire is to trust that what’s ahead is brighter than what’s behind.

The table that tells a story

Every Persian home sets a haft-sin table, seven symbolic items each beginning with the letter ‘s’. Ours stood proudly on the glass coffee table,  apples for beauty, vinegar for patience, sumac for sunrise, coins for prosperity. A mirror and candles. It’s not a showy display, but an inventory of values we too easily forget to name.

Baby Cyrus won’t remember his first Nowruz, but I will remember the quiet symbolism of it, the way renewal doesn’t always come roaring in, sometimes it’s found in the flicker of candlelight on a child’s face.

Flavours that speak without words

My husband, H, took charge of the kitchen, preparing sabzeh polow, herbed rice with fish, a dish so fragrant it seemed to lift the winter gloom from the house. Between two cultures, two languages and two ways of seeing the world, it’s the one language we both speak fluently.

The 13th day and letting go

Tradition dictates that the Nowruz celebrations end with Sizdah Bedar, a picnic on the 13th day, spent outdoors to ward off bad luck. We drove to a nearby park, packed sandwiches, tea, and the sabzeh we’d grown on our haft-sin table. Tossing those green shoots into a stream symbolises casting away the old year’s troubles. I found it unexpectedly moving, this simple act of release. We rarely let go of anything properly in modern life, we archive, store and scroll through it instead. The Persians, it seems, have found a better way.

The quiet lessons of renewal

Eyd-e shoma mobarak, a happy new year to all who celebrate Persian New Year.