BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Folklore and Mythology Happy Yalda

Tomorrow night is yalda night. Yalda means birthday. Iranian celebrate longest night in the year every Dec.21st as a feast. Traditionally we have to be wakeful until morning when unconquerable Sun born (sunrise I mean) . Yes its birthday of sun and it remains us from Mithraism (the first Iranian religion) more than 3000 years ago I guess. Form my childhood I loved this night so much, all the family came together and ate nuts, fruits and sweeties, play and chat.
We have some other ancient feasts as Nouroze and Chaharshambeh Sori. They are Zoroastrian feasts, Iranian are Muslim but less care of Islamic feasts and for these reason Arab call us �fire adore�.

I can�t add and thing about Mithraism cause don�t know but If you want to now more, try these sites
http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/Sept97/Mitra/index.html

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html
if you want to know what we do in this night, I can answer but don�t know whole customs and traditions about it.

I was searching for Yalda and found this article in wikipedia, it shows possibility of relation between Xmas and Yalda night.

The festival was considered extremely important in pre-Islamic Iran and continues to be celebrated to this day, a period of more than 6000 years. Some historians believe that the festival spread to Europe through contacts between the Roman and Persian empires and was eventually replaced by Christmas; a theory that accounts for the celebration of Christmas on 25 December, rather than the later date of January 6 that is believed to be the correct date of birth of Christ by eastern orthodox church.

You can see full article here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalda