NEWROZ:The Kurdish Peoples Celebrat

NEWROZ: the Kurdish Peoples celebratLong ago, before humanity had its organised religions and pontificating priests, the celebrations of people revolved around the key dates in the year-the harvest time, midwinter, the coming of spring, longest day etc. The seasons and their rhythms controlled both the farmer and the herder and dictated the peace and nature of their celebrations. Organised religions have always resented these "people festivals" and have converted them into "saints day" or banned them altogether. Yet two of these have survived despite repression and proscription and are still with us today. One is the midwinter('Yule') that even now manages to push its way through the Christmas and other religious veneers given to the longest night celebrations. The other celebration that still survives intact is that which welcomes the Vernal (spring) Equinox, the time when the days become longer than the night and winter has clearly ended. This festival has been kept alive throughout many communities in the middle East but non more strongly than by the Kurdish people. This day is called NEWROZ Literally NEW DAY and has been celebrated for literally thousands of years in the Zagros mountains and surrounding area. It pre-dates even the Zoroastrian religion of the area but became part of it and was a joyous and noisy event that all the Kurds looked forward to every year. With the coming of Islam in the eight and ninth centuries, Newroz became a festival that represented the struggle of the Kurds for freedom against the various enemies who attempted to subjugate them-whether it was Arab armies, Christian crusaders, Mongol cavalry or Ottoman Turks. Throughout the long centuries since, Newroz each year has been celebrated, sometimes in secret but always in joy, by everyone who considers themselves Kurdish. The Kurdish legends say that Newroz celebrates the overthrow of ZUHAK the tyrant, who in various stores had snakes growing out of his shoulders and required human sacrifices to control his affliction. He was eventually defeated when a brave blacksmith by the name of KAWA led a revolt against him and freed the people.Since the re-emergence of Kurdish national awareness in the last century, Newroz has become the symbol of a people rejoicing in their tradition but at the same time defying their respective oppressors. Newroz in 1946 saw the proclamation of Mahabad Republic in Iranian Kurdistan and more recently it marked the high-point of the uprising in 1991 against the Saddam and the Ba'athists in Iraq.