Yalda / Khor-Ruz / a Legacy of Ancient Iranshahr — Continued (2)

Although celebrations of the winter solstice can also be found among some peoples other than the ancient Iranians, the source presents the observance as a common feature of Indo-Iranian peoples and a legacy of their ancient shared culture from a time when they lived alongside one another.

The text traces forms of this ritual celebration to around 4000 BCE among different branches of what it calls the Aryan peoples: from northern Nordic and Germanic peoples, from Iran to Germany and Lithuania, and onward to India and the peoples of southern Russia.

It even proposes that the influence of this celebration can be studied among distant peoples such as those of Japan, through the Ainu—described in the source as Aryan peoples who entered Japan from Russia and strongly influenced the important Yamato dynasty—and in Egypt through connections between Egyptians and the Aryan Hittites.

There are also lands whose relationship with this tradition remains a distant mystery, such as the remarkable Maya civilization of South America, which is likewise described here as having celebrated this night with a similar understanding of the birth of a solar deity. These parallels are discussed further below.

In this essay I intend to look at peoples who celebrate this night and to consider noteworthy correspondences among their traditions.

This night coincides with the ancient solar observance of “Khor-Ruz,” celebrated in the ancient Iranian and later Roman tradition of Mithra. Among both Iranians and Romans who followed this tradition, it is presented as coinciding with the birth of Mithra, regarded by Iranians and Romans before the birth of Christ as a sacred day.

Ancient Iranians called this day “Khor-Ruz,” the day of the sun, and celebrated the night as the night of the birth of Mithra or the sun. The source describes an ancient practice in which people on the slopes of the Alborz remained awake until dawn waiting for sunrise and celebrated the victory of Mithra and defeat of Ahriman by reciting a prayer called “Niyad.”

People are described as celebrating this night from the Iranian plateau to the Indian subcontinent, and the text states that people in Bangladesh still honour it as a “night of light.” In later periods, Mazdakites and Khurramites are also said to have called and honoured the day “Khorram-Ruz.”

It may also be interesting to note that in Persian the word mehr can mean both the sun/Mithra and love or affection. Understanding affection as light points to the special importance of this word and to a correspondence between the concepts of light and love in Iranian culture.