Students at Ohio University can experience first hand the celebration of the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, on Saturday with the event presented by the Iranian Student Society at 6 p.m. in Walter Hall.
Nowruz is the combination of two words, “Now,” meaning “new,” and “ruz,” meaning “day.” There will be presentations of Persian culture with live music performances, dances and Persian food.
“We are getting together from different nations with different colors to practice democracy and liberty,” Seyed Mohammadreza Heidari, president of the ISS and a Ph.D. student studying environmental engineering, said.
Olivia Raney, a senior studying photojournalism, expects the room to be full on Saturday.
“The Iranians always put on really great events,” Raney said. “They always pay attention to a lot of detail. It’s their New Year celebration, so it’s a really big deal.”
Nowruz has been celebrated for more than 3,000 years, Heidari said, and it starts at the exact moment as the beginning of spring, usually on March 21. It is marks the first day of the first month in the Iranian calendar.
“It was calculated precisely by Iranian scholars, such as Khayyan,” Heidari said. “Who designed the Iranian calendar on the basis of sun movement one thousand years ago.”
Nowruz is the most important celebration in Iran and Raney expects there to be great displays of culture with dances, instruments for the important celebration.
“We want to show that even though the U.S. election results led to ban our families to visit their children or ban us from visiting our family,” Heidari said. “We are still supporting the unity of humanity.”
