Shab-e Yalda

The longest night

Shab-e Yalda, also called Shab-e Chelleh, “the night of forty”, falls on the winter solstice, the longest and darkest night of the year. From the next morning the days begin to lengthen again, and the celebration has long been read as the victory of light over darkness and the rebirth of the sun. Chelleh refers to the forty-day period of deep winter that the night opens.

The word yalda came into Persian from Syriac, where it means “birth”.

Around the table

Families gather at the house of the oldest relatives and sit around a table laid with symbolic things: a lamp or candles for light, water for purity, and red fruits for warmth — pomegranates and watermelon above all, and also jujubes, grapes or beetroot. Nuts, dried fruit and sweets made for the occasion are shared as the night goes on.

People stay up late. Poems are recited, especially those of Hafez, whose Divan sits on the bookshelves of most Iranian families. Many open it at random for a fal-e Hafez, reading the verse they land on as a kind of fortune. Stories from the Shahnameh are told, games are played, and gifts are given to children, to brides and to new in-laws.

A shared heritage

In 2022 Yalda/Chella was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity for Iran and Afghanistan. UNESCO describes it as a celebration of the sun and the warmth of life, of friendship, hospitality and respect, passed on mostly within families.