The Tuesday night (Chaharshanbe Suri, 'Wednesday (eve) feast') before the spring equinox, you light bonfires, often as many as nine on a row, and purge yourself by jumping over them while asking the fire to draw your 'yellow', everything weak and sick, from you and give you its 'red', strength and health.
Thus fortified, on the day of the spring equinox, you dress in all new clothes, or at least a token new pair of socks, and have a lovely dinner of fish, herb rice and herb omelets, and admire your haft seen ('seven s's), your table of symbolic items, most of which start with the Persian letter s (clockwise from front left): senjed (dried oleaster fruit, symbolizing love), sir (garlic, symbolizing medicine), samanu (wheat germ paste, symbolizing wealth), serkeh (vinegar, symbolizing old age), sib (apple, symbolizing beauty and health), sabzeh (wheat grass, symbolizing rebirth) and sonbol (hyacinth, symbolizing the arrival of spring, unfortunately too big for my small haft seen and represented here by a simple little flower my gracious girl picked for me we do have a large hyacinth and it fills the house with its heavenly scent), as well as eggs and coins for life and wealth, and a mirror to reflect it all.
Eide shoma mobarak!
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