Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is celebrated annually on the first day of Spring (March 20/21), marking the beginning of the Persian solar calendar. This year, the Ursinus Community celebrated with an event on Friday, March 21, offering students and faculty alike the opportunity to celebrate together.
Ursinus students Sara Samimi, Cassie Heinsohn, and Maryam Abutalib organized the event, providing information as well as festivities for those in attendance. The Religious and Spiritual Life Department, in collaboration with the Muslim Student Association, helped host the event, the first Nowruz celebration in Ursinus history. The holiday follows a lunar calendar similar to the Chinese calendar, marking this year as the year of the snake.
“We did a small presentation to explain what Nowruz was and had some small festivities. It was like a dinner party, because when you celebrate Nowruz it’s typically a dinner party in celebration for the new year,” shared Samimi. One of the biggest customs included in the festivities was the Haft-Seen table, depicting seven symbolic items starting with “S.”
It wasn’t just Ursinus students coming to celebrate either. “I invited some Persians from the community around us and they actually turned up! They had a lovely time there and they actually offered to be some donors for next year so we can make it bigger and better,” Samimi explained.
One of the highlights of the New Year is the egg man. “It’s a beautiful part of New Year’s for us,” remarked Samimi. “The egg man is often a man who puts dirt on his face and dresses homeless. He will come to doors and dance and open a bag. The community will give him eggs and money and once the bag is full, he would go to the homeless people on the street and give them eggs and money for the new year.”
With the first celebration of Nowruz in the Ursinus history books, Persian students and members of the community alike are looking forward to what the rest of the year has in store!