Guilan’s Nowruz rituals

Young journalists club

News ID: 3747
Iran » Iran
Publish Date: 10:44 - 26 March 2014
Tehran, YJC. The New Year has been celebrated with a number of rituals in the northern province of Guilan.

Nowruz is Iran’s national New Year. The people of this land have celebrated it. The celebration has found different from one place to another, but everywhere there is the sense of change and imminent burgeoning of nature.

There have been specific rituals for the Nowruz of which only two is exercised now. These include Aroose Gole, Babe Chare, Takom Chi, Khers Bani, Antar Raghsani, itinerant entertainment, bonfire , Charshanbeh Suri, Khaneh Damooji, Khane Pazani, and Barreh Gardani, researcher Mohammad Boshra says.

These special traditional rituals have been the Guilak’s (people of Guilan) ways of anticipating, welcoming, and appreciating the spring.

Nowruzi Khani is a practice where a few elderly men grab a lantern and twigs of hedge, going house to house and chanting songs that herald the coming of the spring.

Aroos Goleh is a show starring a giant, an old man, a bride, and a maid. The giant stands for the winter, the old man for nature, the bride for the spring, and the maid, named Gol Khanom, for the bridesmaid.

The giant tries to flee with the bride, while the old man aided by Gol Khanom fights it and wins.

Another researcher of Guilan ethnology Freydoon Nozad who has so far written 11 books on the area and its culture says that in the Barreh Gardani and Khaneh Damooji rituals there is a good-omened animal or person that brings joy and prosperity to homes.


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