[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[cyrus]

Merry Yalda - The Iranian Christmas By Iranian Scholar Dr. Esmail Nooriala

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The interesting point is that we, Iranians, did not use to think of a God called Mithra. Many of us had not even heard of his name. But, for more than 20 years Iranians all over the world have been getting together at a night such as tonight and celebrating his mythical birth. Celebration aside, I would like to say a few words about this strange and highly significant socio-cultural phenomenon in the contemporary history of my country.

During the last 23 years, millions of Iranians have been driven out of their motherland due to political, social and economic hardships. And it has been during this long period of exile that we have begun a new search for our roots -- not because we are now living as aliens in new habitats but because we have become emphatically stricken by an alien version of Islam in our own land. The coming to power of a certain stratum of Shi'ite clergy in Iran and its forceful imposition of what it sees as "Islamic rules" has created a certain psychological upheaval in all of us, forcing us to remember a far-away past when Iran was an independent empire with its own home-brewed religion(s). We have been reminded that our great country was invaded, conquered and in many ways, raped by the new Muslim converts from the Arabian Peninsula some 1400 years ago. The Islamic Revolution seems like a re-run of that catastrophe!

All through these centuries, we have not accepted that we became Muslims because of the defeat in the hands of Arabs. First and foremost, we have resisted in adopting Arabic as our language -- unlike other South Eastern Muslim nations (from Syria and Iraq to all of North Africa) who accepted Arabic as a fact of life, losing their language and, thus, their ancient identities. We still read the Qoran, the Muslim holy book, in its native language, Arabic, and do not understand it. We say our prayers to Allah in Arabic and hardly know what we are saying to the Almighty! We have transformed Arabic Islam and invented many Persian versions of it that suit our own native needs and concerns, none of which are accepted by the rest of the Muslim world.

It is both surprising and delightful to look at Christmas trees and their decorations and remind ourselves that this is the same evergreen or Cypress tree (Sarv) our ancestors used to decorate in their cottages for the birth night of Mithra. This universality of our New Year festivities opens the door to a more humanistic and naturalistic perspectives. Every Sunday -- that is, the day of the Sun God! -- we should remember that it is really Mithra, the Arian-Iranian God of the Sun and love, who is also being worshipped in every Christian church.

Every Christmas, we should remind ourselves that it is Yalda again. During every Yalda we celebrate both the rebirth of the sun and the birth of a man who is supposed to have come for the salvation of human kind. This is the magic of cultural genetics at work. We are all from the same origin and same sequence of genes. We are a configuration of natural elements. A mixture of wind, earth, water and fire. And between two brackets of "ashes", it is the fire that symbolizes our life and well-being. Fire makes us and swallows us, we make fire and coexist with it. We are the created the and creator. As Mithra is.

Let me finish my words with a line of poetry by our great poet, Hafez, who, I believe, was a Mithraic thinker and artist. By the magic of his pne,, he reverses the cause-effect relationship between the Sun and the life of the human kind and writes:

Out of the hidden fire in my chest

The sun is just a flame

Keeping the sky ablaze.

Source: http://www.puyeshgaraan.com/Nooriala.htm

[cyrus]

Please Watch Video Prog 50 Yalda In Persian: Celebration of Mitra's Birth at Winter Equinox