{"id":527,"date":"2018-12-20T14:13:22","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T14:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=527"},"modified":"2018-12-20T14:13:22","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T14:13:22","slug":"happy-yalda-night-solstice-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=527","title":{"rendered":"Happy Yald\u0101 Night! – Solstice 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

December 20th<\/sup>, 2018<\/i><\/p>\n

Well, I hoped he would be in prison by now, too. But the walls are closing in, and at this point, it\u2019s a matter of \u201cwhen,\u201d and for how long, and how many others will be in adjacent cells. He\u2019s going down.<\/p>\n

See? You feel hopeful already, don\u2019t you? Well, this is the Solstice Essay, and that\u2019s the whole point of the thing.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s talk about trippy Solstice stuff.<\/p>\n

They celebrate the winter Solstice in Iran. I was a bit surprised, because the whole place is south of 40 north, going all the way down to 21 north. While winters in the mountains of Iran can be fierce, and sometimes downright Canadian, most of the country has a fairly wide range of climate, but with fairly mild winters\u2014no worse than, say, Tennessee. If anything, the place is known for its heat, with temperatures often well above 120 in the height of summer.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s sort of equatorish. It doesn\u2019t do midnight suns, and the long winter nights might go 14 hours instead of 20. Nobody is going to mistake it for Sweden.<\/p>\n

The government is religious bordering on nuts, and the people are secular, bordering on sane. It suggests that celebrations, even of natural events, might have the sort of tension built in that the Christmas defenders at Faux News can only dream about. But apparently their winter Solstice is free of such. Oh\u2014don\u2019t let the religious police get wind of your wine and beer stash. That wouldn\u2019t be cool.<\/p>\n

On the night of the winter solstice, they have the Shab-e-Yald<\/i>\u0101<\/i><\/span> <\/i>(\u201cYald\u0101<\/span> Night\u201d) or sometimes, Shab-e-Chelleh, \u201cNight of Forty\u201d. Shades of Ali-Baba! It isn\u2019t celebrated in Ali-Baba\u2019s home turf, Saudi Arabia, but it is big in Iran, most Kurdish regions, and most of the old Soviet breakaway -Stans.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a> \u201cChelleh\u201d means 40, or fortieth. It\u2019s a number that pops up pretty often in writings of the Biblical era, including, of course, the Bible. It\u2019s generally taken to mean, \u201cNobody\u2019s quite sure how long or big it was, but it was a fair old bit.\u201d They have winter (and summer) divvied up into forty day periods, in a complicated system that suggest that their calendar scheduling was Lent to them by the Catholics. Rather than try to describe it, and thus reaffirming I have no idea what I\u2019m talking about, I\u2019ll just quote from Wikipedia: \u201cThere are all together three 40-day periods, one in summer, and two in winter. The two winter periods are known as the \u2018great Chelleh\u2019 period (Day<\/i> to Bahman<\/i>,[rs 2]<\/a> 40 full days), followed\/overlapped by the \u2018small Chelleh\u2019 period (Bahman<\/i> to Bahman<\/i>,[rs 2]<\/a> 20 days + 20 nights = 40 nights and days). Shab-e Chelleh is the night opening the \u2018big Chelleh\u2019 period, that is the night between the last day of autumn and the first day of winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Got it? Good. Now explain it to me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m enchanted with the notion of big and little 40s. I can\u2019t help but wonder if there is a medium 40, which is maybe 38-42.<\/p>\n

Yald\u0101<\/span> is even more fun. It seems that back in the fifth century, a sect of early Nestorian Christians fled to Iran, escaping religious persecution. Their word for \u2018birth\u2019 was, as you might have guessed, \u2018yald\u0101<\/span>.\u2019 Iran then, as now, had the philosophy of dhimma<\/i>, that they must be protective of minority religions and customs within their own land. They gave the Nestorians sanctuary and freedom. Didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n

The Nestorians did what religionists absolutely love to do, and tore themselves apart over minutiae of doctrinal differences, but before imploding, decided that since the Annunciation was in spring, that meant the birth of Jesus was in early winter, and made Yald\u0101<\/span> the regional word that equates to \u201cChristmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is another word, \u201cyelda\u201d which, while spelled differently in English, is the same in Aramaic. Yelda means \u201cdark night\u201d or \u201clong night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yelda may have migrated from northern Europe, where it is pronounced \u201cyule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hmm. Start of winter, associated with birth and long dark nights, and yule. Oh, and the Christians swiped it. OK, it\u2019s Solstice, all right.<\/p>\n

A Viking probably would easily recognize the tone of Yald\u0101<\/span>. People gather against the darkness and the forces of evil (\u201cAhriman<\/i>\u201d) and tell tales and jokes and recite poetry, and eat the best of the summer crop, mostly fruits. The foods eaten on that particular night have special properties; eating watermelon won\u2019t do anything in particular on Yald\u0101<\/span> night, but will protect you from heat exhaustion later on in the summer. Magic watermelons, at least on Solstice night. Some fruits and vegetables protect against insect bites, and garlic prevents rheumatism. In a lot of areas, contraband stashes of wine and beer are consumed, and lights are arrayed in the living areas.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the evening of the 19th<\/sup> as I write this, and I\u2019m in the southern part of California. It\u2019s nearly full dark, but I can still see palms silhouetted against the sky. I was moping a bit, missing the snow and cold that to me is the hallmark of the winter Solstice. But this year, there is no snow where I live\u2014the forth time in the past five years that\u2019s happened\u2014and while it\u2019s cold up there, it\u2019s satisfyingly nippy down here. So I\u2019m not missing Solstice. Not really. It isn\u2019t just winter, as the Iranians show.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll have something nice for Solstice dinner and call family and friends.<\/p>\n

And a rocket launch from nearby Vandenberg was scrubbed, and they have rescheduled for the night of…Solstice. Nothing like a bright light in the longest night to celebrate!<\/p>\n

Reading that Solstice is celebrated, with its true meaning, in the dry and dusty lands of Persia, cheered me right up. How can you not like people who gather against the long darkness, and tell jokes and sing and enjoy food and drink and dream of a brighter future?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s what I hope we\u2019re are all doing on Solstice night.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t lose hope. Never lose hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 20th, 2018 Well, I hoped he would be in prison by now, too. But the walls are closing in, and at this point, it\u2019s a matter of \u201cwhen,\u201d and for how long, and how many others will be in adjacent cells. He\u2019s going down. See? You feel hopeful already, don\u2019t you? Well, this is … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Happy Yald\u0101 Night! – Solstice 2018”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[617,2,3,60,18],"tags":[605,662,207,240,322,660,661],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-humor","category-personalmisc","category-politics","category-science","tag-605","tag-celebration","tag-hope","tag-iran","tag-solstice","tag-yalda","tag-yelda"],"yoast_head":"\nHappy Yald\u0101 Night! - Solstice 2018 · Zepp's Commentaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=527\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy Yald\u0101 Night! - Solstice 2018 · Zepp's Commentaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 20th, 2018 Well, I hoped he would be in prison by now, too. 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