By Yalda Mikferkhal
When thinking of winter holidays, there’s generally a few ones that come to mind. Christmas and Hanukkah are widely accepted as the two most well-known and celebrated December holidays. There’s a familiarity between our American society and those two holidays.
But what about the less represented holidays?
More locally, here in the Los Angeles area, we have a population of approximately 700,000 Iranian-American’s living among us. One of the most important holidays celebrated for hundreds and thousands of years is the spring equinox which Iranian’s refer to as “Nowruz”.
Parviz Mobayen, a Los Angeles County local, who celebrates Nowruz, shared his view of the holiday…”It’s the best time of the year for me. Getting together with family, cleaning up, setting up the altar, and eating good food.”. When asked if he thinks that Nowruz is underrepresented, Mobayen said, “Definitely. It’s a very popular topic among the Persian community here in LA, but talk of it stays mostly within that said community.”
Iranian-American students here at Costa have a similar point of view as Mobayen. One student who shared his opinion of the subject is Cyrus Saadat (10th). Saadat explained that the best thing about Nowruz is the food, and that if there was one aspect of it that should be represented more is just that. “The food is genuinely the best. There’s rice with salmon, beef kebob and chicken kebob, and a ton of desserts. Every family has their own way of making each dish and that’s what makes it super special. But yeah, I definitely wish the food served in Nowruz got more recognition.”.
America is a diverse and highly mixed country. The underrepresented holidays mentioned previously are only two out of many celebrations that are underrepresented here. Doing research and looking into other holidays that don’t get widely recognized could help one develop new points of view and gather interesting information on other cultures and traditions.
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