#shabe yalda

[eye-of-enigmatic-thought]

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a good December! These were my contributions to the @welcomehomefanzine winter zine! I managed to do more art this time too! For my contributions I wanted to draw art on various Winter traditions from different cultures, such as also my own! If you decide to colour in any of these, please @ me!!

Also keep in mind, we are not affiliated with Clown or the team behind WH, we are just fans who love the work!!

I wrote more on all the artworks under the cut! Including the traditions they were based on!

First one was a little visual pun on the first verse of '12 Days of Christmas', Poppy is the partridge in the pear tree! Not much to say about this one, it's my only Christmas related thing! Second one was based on the Southern Welsh winter tradition of the Mari Lwyd. The Mari Lwyd is a hobby horse made from a horse's skull and is then decorated. It is puppeteered to go to the doors of various houses where its handlers will sing verses on letting it in to the home, you are supposed to sing back excuses on why you can't let it in, and if you relent, you invite the Mari Lwyd and its handlers in your home, where it will eat your food and alcohol and terrorise your children! The tradition and its true origins and meaning and even etymology is unknown, but it's thought to have ancient Pagan roots! It seems here, Eddie relented in his songs to it and regretted everything immediately after!

Third image is another Poppy centric piece because I love her. Here she is dressed up as a figure from Schnabelperchten! This is a tradition seen only in Rauris Valley in Austria and is a manifestation of Perchta, a goddess from Alpine Paganism that took the form of a old woman who'd punish misbehaving children by slitting their bellies. For Schnabelperchten, on the 5th of January, figures dressed in smocks, jackets, and a beak-like mask will visit various homes to check their upkeep and cleanliness all while emitting a soft 'ga ga ga', in more ancient versions of the legend, if you did not keep your living quarters in good enough conditions, the Schnabelperchten would slit open your belly and dump all the rubbish inside! Poppy would never do that though! No one tell her about that part!! Last but not least is one based on a tradition from my culture! Here you see the entire neighbourhood celebrating Yalda Night and spending time with one anotherThis is a Persian/Iranian festival with Zoroastrian roots held on the Winter Solstice. This day was traditionally seen as ill omened as being the darkest day of the year, the forces of Ahriman and his Deevs were most active, and so much of the day entailed family and friends getting together in good company. They would read stories and poems (especially the Shahnameh or poems by Hafez) with nuts and various fruits from previous harvests being served, watermelon and pomegranates being the most prominent! It was also encouraged to stay well up after midnight lest misfortune befall you! Due to it also being the longest night, it was also seen as the birthdate of the sun deity Mehr (or Mithra), as the subsequent days would get longer.

This was all fun to do and I hope I did all these traditons justice!! I am most likely missing out a lot on my explanations for them, so I hope I at least peaked your interest in these different Winter festivities enough to look into them on your own!

[teddypickle]

Rainy Wednesday - Winter 2022

[holyfigtree]

[rh35211]

Shab-e Yalda: The Zoroastrian Winter Solstice  – The World Zoroastrian Organisation

birth

The word “yalda” (یلدا‎) comes from the Syriac word yēled (ܝܠܕ), meaning “birth”. However, it is likely that the festivities themselves were adopted by ancient Persians (of Zoroastrian faith) from the annual celebration of the 'renewal of the Sun' of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians.

[viva-la-topknot]

I meant to share this earlier in the month so more folks could enjoy it, but oh well. Happy Holidays, everyone!

🐉 More Dragons 🎨 General art tag.

[kai-does-some-art]

You're my own Yalda night 🍉

[caesarinsalata]

𐏁𐎠𐎲𐏐𐎹𐎠𐎾𐎭𐏐𐎸𐎲𐎠𐎼𐎣

[شب یلدا مبارک :Shabe Yalda Mobarak]

"Happy Yalda Night!" 12/21

I wish you a long and happy life like Shabe Yalda, sweet as watermelon and fruitful as pomegranates!

I hope it's not too incorrect! I did EXTENSIVE research to attempt to get the right words as well as an Old Persian Keyboard to get the proper symbols. I wanted to try and do this justice, I apologize if anything's not in the right place or completely wrong 💦

My reasoning behind this:

Since I've been working on my Xerxes AU lately. I've been doing a LOT of research on Old Persian Empire history and looked up what their equivalent of Christmas/Winter Solstice was and found Yalda. So I just thought, since I'm incorporating a bit of real history in my AU, I figured Yalda made sense for a holiday/festivity to celebrate in the Xerxes World.

Xerxes is based off of ancient Persian Empire aspects, so I thought I'd commemorate the holidays with something.

In general, I love learning about other cultures and researching virtually ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. So, I wanted to show what I'm looking into and the work I've been putting into this AU.

Also I have a poll for you:

[raedas]

lovely lovely anar happy shabe yalda everyone 🫶🫶🫶

[banamaak]

happy shabe yalda! شب یلدا مبارک

[fish-at-fish-fish-resort]

So tetra culture is based on your own irl, which is really cool. Could you give some examples of tetra cultural practices?

yeah pretty much. i tend to make shit up as i go and incorporate persian cultural practices and fests in there when i can (usually when the celebrations happen i just like draw stuff, like i did last shabe yalda. speaking of, the next one is soon!) its just an excuse to draw stuff from my own culture but make it silly and splatoon because im very much not normal about splatoon. i mostly just draw the stuff i personally do celebrate.

[dariamalek]

What I Never Knew As The Daughter of Iranian Immigrant Parents

I am an only child, born in Canada, to two parents who immigrated from Iran in their early 20's.

My parents came to Canada in 1994, not knowing a word of English, and quickly learned that, if you want to get anywhere in life, they must learn to adapt to this Western ideology.

My mum went to school to fulfill her dream of being a nurse and my father, who must be the most resourceful man I know, had gone through multiple career changes before building his successful business.

I was born a few years later, in 1997, and I was immediately labelled a "Canadian."

In school, we were taught that we were "Canadians," and we learnt the history of Canada and celebrated "Canadian" Thanksgiving and learnt about Victoria Day, which is a "Canadian" holiday. All proper practice; we need to learn about the country that some of us migrated to, others born in, however I grew up celebrating things like Iranian New Year (Nowruz), the Winter Solstice (Shabe-Yalda) and Nature's Day (13-Be Dar) and I always wondered why I had to celebrate these things and other kids didn't.

As a child, it was quite annoying how my family insisted that we celebrate these Iranian traditions and take them seriously. I probably just saw it as another day to get off school.

Quickly after that, I realized that this diminishing of culture had turned children into dense, shallow young adults - and after the devastating events of September 2001, the mentality of these uneducated, uncultured young adults turned into racism.

Although, I use the word "racism" because I couldn't find a better word that defined lazy, uncultured inertia.

Because the truth is, children are not racist, but they've been taught that this bland, Westernized ideology is the norm and anything outside of that is odd or strange - this includes the colour of someones skin, the religious dressings, the languages they speak, the food they eat, the events they celebrate.

When I opened up to my mother about this, she said:

"How will you ever know who you are if you don't know where you came from."

I responded:

"What do you mean? I was born in Canada - that makes me Canadian!"

Then, my mother said something to me that stuck for life. She said:

"Each egg inside a woman's body goes back three generations-"

She's referring to the idea that that "prenatal exposure has the potential to directly impact three generations," as explained by epidemiologist Barbara Cohn, principal investigator of the CHDS. "Unlike males, who make sperm throughout life, females are thought to be born with all the eggs they will ever produce. They include the mother (known as the F0 generation), the fetus (F1 generation), and, if the fetus is a girl, all her immature egg cells—any of which may one day become the F2 generation." To put it in simpler terms, you were created inside your mother while your mother was still inside your grandmother.

She continued:

"Your grandmother wasn't born in Canada and neither was I. You were in a different country well before you were in Canada."

And that's when it hit me: the most heartbreaking thing for an immigrant parent is watching a part of them, they should have indented in their children, fade out into a foreign ideology.

How are your parents supposed to guide, teach and raise you in a language they don't know how to speak?

I realized why my parents spent so much time, put so much effort and worked so hard to learn a language that was foreign to them but, also made sure I learnt Farsi fluently: they knew that one day, growing up in an English speaking country, I wouldn't be able to understand their guidance in Farsi because all I spoke, all I learnt, was English.

Do you know how difficult it must be to translate everything that you are into something that is so foreign?

There are children in school being bullied for knowing another language! They are being bullied for being able to adapt another culture into their lives; for having the ability to appreciate another culture.

There are parents, who themselves, forget where they came from!

There are parents who no longer appreciate the guidance of their elders because they do not fit into their Western norms!

And most importantly, there are children who disregard their parents and their background to fit in to a society that diminishes everything that's "different."

My parents love for their country made me want to explore my heritage and fall in love with where I came from. And once I fell in love with my own culture and my own roots, I found the ability to actively fall in love with other cultures, languages, literature, music - because my parents taught me that there is beauty in every culture, despite was the media and other people say about it.

Imagine how much of a deeper love you can have for another person if you know about their roots, their cultural values, communicate with them in their own language, celebrate their holidays; you are celebrating such a larger part of them. You are celebrating the first aspect that made them who they are.

Everyone asks me why I speak so many languages and I never had a confident answer until today.

I wanted to learn as many languages as I possibly could so I could communicate with the hearts of the people who escaped their own country to give their children a better life.

I wanted to learn as many languages as I possibly could so I could help that immigrant at the store who was having a hard time communicating with the cashier.

I wanted to learn as many languages so I could understand what they are truly trying to say rather than a rough translation because there are so many beautiful, poetic words and phrases that you just can't translate.

I watched my parents struggle to make sure they keep me connected to my culture in a world where they try to rip it apart from you. When my parents said they wanted me to fall in love with myself, they wanted me to fall in love with all of me; generations in the past. They wanted me to love myself as that little egg that was inside my grandmother travelling from village to village in Iran because my grandfather was high up in the Air Force command and fought in the war.

And if you think about it, the mixed children of this generation have the advantage of learning about two cultures rather than one.

And you know what the hardest part about this is?

In order for us to learn all this once we're in our twenties, our families had to give up a part of what makes them them. They had to leave their family, their soil, to give us the life they couldn't have.

And for my Iranians: our families need to sit back and watch, all the way from another country, while their entire identity is stripped from them, their families and their soil. They have to watch the Iranian youth take to the streets and sacrifice themselves for their soil.

Where is our honour as a generation?

You learn so much about yourselves when you learn about the culture you were brought into. I promise, everything will start making sense and you will learn to love a part of you goes so deep, it can never be reversed.

And that love is so unconditional.

Mom, dad...thank you. Thank you for teaching me who I really am. I am sorry for all the hardships you have gone through. I am so proud of you guys and I promise that I will make you proud and I will make all of your hardships worth it. I love you.

The Green Ney. 10/2025.

[holyfigtree]

“May you find peace in the promise of the solstice night, that each day forward is blessed with more warmth and light. That the cycle of nature, unbroken and true, brings faith to your soul and well-being to you. Rejoice in the darkness, in the silence find rest, and may the days that follow be abundantly blessed.”

[vann0e]

extremely belated shabe yalda and zartosht no diso to all the iranic folks <3 (and happy holidays to all the others who have celebrated/are celebrating holidays recently)

[reasonably-annoyed-fog]

A good Shabe Yalda everyone I’m lighting a candle to ward off the evil and I’m thinking of us all

[farsi-calligraphy]

Tonight is the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere: Winter Solstice, Yule, Shab-e Yalda. No doubt for as long as humans have been around they have kept the fires burning on these dark nights of the year. Yalda is a Syriac word for birth, and Shab-e Yalda is an ancient Iranian celebration of the longest night. Not just physical darkness surrounds us as, but other forms of darkness as well. And yet, we find that illumination is found even in the depths of shadow. Hannukah, Advent, the miracle of the Christmas Birth, the fires of Yuletide celebrations and the eating of melons and pomegranates--those fruits of the sun--on Shabe-e Yalda are all portents of hope that the sun and the better lights of human expression will edge back into fullness. Illumination is in the depths of shadows -- روشنایی در اعماق سایه هاست  -- Persian calligraphy by S J Thomas.  www.worldcalligraphy.com