On Sunday, Palo Alto City Library held its annual Persian New Year, or Nowruz, celebration at the Mitchell Park Community Center, marking the transition from winter to spring.
The two-hour event included performances by Ballet Afsanah — a Bay Area non-profit promoting Iranian and West Asian cultural heritage — and the Amir School of Music, followed by a storytime featuring Persian children’s book author and illustrator Anahita Tamaddon.
The celebration also showcased a traditional Haft-Seen — an arrangement of seven symbolic items starting with the letter “S” in the Persian alphabet representing prosperity, wealth, health and good luck — as well as a raffle and crafts.
Mitchell Park Supervising Librarian and organizer Valeh Dabiri Alaee, who pioneered the event in 2022, said the event was meant to bring the community together.
“The [Palo Alto City] Library celebrates all the different cultures,” she said. “We have Lunar New Year, we have Diwali and Persian New Year. We celebrate all of them, and it’s just about getting to know different cultures and celebrating our differences at the same time.”
The celebration also represents broader themes of gratitude and respect, as seen in one dance during which performers set down flowers in front to honor those who cannot dance.
Over the years, Dabiri Alaee and event coordinators have continued to add new elements of Persian culture to the Nowruz celebration. This year, they set up fake fires to resemble “Chaharshanbe Suri,” literally meaning Scarlet Wednesday — a tradition in which participants jump over bonfires to ward off negative energy and start the year in a positive light.
Rinconada Supervising Librarian Reshard Ausserlechner said expanding the celebration each year helps share Nowruz and Persian traditions with the wider community.
“I think the more we celebrate, the happier we are,” Ausserlechner said. “If you don’t keep culture alive, it disappears, so it’s important to bring it to the community, to bring it to the children and just celebrate it so it remains a living thing.”
Dabiri Alaee hopes the lesson people take away from the event is that people are very similar to one another.
“Everyone values family,” she said. “Family is important in all of our cultures, and we all celebrate in different ways. It’s really about knowing that we’re all human, we all come from different places and we should honor and respect that while partaking in others’ cultures.”
