Sizdah Bedar

Sizdah Bedar — literally “thirteen outdoors” — falls on the thirteenth of Farvardin and closes the Nowruz holidays. Iranians leave the house for the whole day and spend it in the open: beside rivers, in orchards, gardens and parks. In Iran it is also called Nature Day (روز طبیعت).

Its best-known rite is giving the haft-sin’s sabzeh back to running water. The sprouts, grown at home in the weeks before Nowruz to stand for the new year’s greenness, are set into a stream so that whatever is unwelcome travels off with the current. Young people tie knots in the grass and tie a wish into the knot with it.

Above all it is a day of company and open air: lunch spread on the grass, games and singing, families visiting families under an open sky. When it ends, the thirteen days of Nowruz are over and the working year begins.