Friday 23 March 2012

Chahar Shanbeh Suri - Persian Festival of Fire




Last Wednesday we were privileged to share Chahar Shanbeh Suri with dear friends. I'm borrowing the explanation from Wikipedia so forgive me for being a bit lazy.


The words Chahar Shanbeh mean Wednesday and Suri means red. Bonfires are lit to "keep the sun alive" until early morning.[3] The celebration usually starts in the evening, with people making bonfires in the streets and jumping over them singing zardi-ye man az to, sorkhi-ye to az man. The literal translation is, my sickly yellow paleness is yours, your fiery red color is mine. This is a purification rite.[4] Loosely translated, this means you want the fire to take your paleness, sickness, and problems and in turn give you redness, warmth, and energy.

The boys performed the traditional fire-jumping (a bit quickly for my camera skills but quite cool photos, I thought).







There was also an attempt at pronouncing the traditional song (some more successful than others!).



We girlies wimped out and jumped over little cans of fire (no photies of me as I had the camera!). There is some rather embarrassing video footage of our little skips over the fire but I'll spare you the detail!

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