Yezidi New Year Festival Sere Sal: How do Yezidis prepare for New Year? (video)
It is interesting to know how Yezidis living in Armenia prepare for New Year celebrations. “Our New Year falls in spring,” says Sona Tamoyan, an 11th-form pupil. The Yezidi New Year festival Sere Sal (literally ‘head of the year’) is celebrated on Charshema Sor or ‘Red Wednesday’, the first Wednesday after April fourteenth. Charshema Sor, when all work ceases, is a day of rest, reflection and worship. The celebrations begin on Tuesday evening, when the glow of candles and lamps fills Lalish Valley to welcome the New Year, announcing the birth of spring and the new cycle of life and rebirth. Sere Sal commemorates a remote time when the ‘Peacock Angel’ Tawûsê Melek descended to earth to spread his brilliant wings in order to calm the lifeless earth from its agitation and to bless the earth with peace and fertility as represented by the peacock, the rainbow, and their bright colors. It is the oldest surviving feast in Mesopotamia. “The celebration usually starts in the evening, with people gathering over the fire, jumping over it and shouting, “My yellow is yours and your red is mine.” This means you want the fire to take your pallor, sickness, and problems and in turn give you redness, warmth, and energy. This ritual is still observed in Iran and takes place on the eve of the last Wednesday before Nowruz," Sona Tamoyan said. Yazidis believe that Tawûsê Melek the 'Peacock Angel' is the representative of God on the face of the Earth, and that he comes down to the Earth on the first Wednesday of Nisan (April). Yazidis hold that God created Tawûsê Melek on this day, and observe it as New Year's Day, a time of remembrance, renewal, and fertility.
