Holi is a festival that is celebrated mainly in India that has been in existence for thousands of years and marks the beginning of spring. It is celebrated on the last full moon day of the Hindu lunisolar calendar month. It is usually in March
There is another festival that is called Nowruz, also known as the Persian New Year, is mainly celebrated in Iran. It has roots in Zoroastrianism, a very old religion dating back to thousands of years. It is celbrated during the vernal equinox, during March.
Both Holi and Nowruz are ancient festivals that are celebrated to welcome the Spring season.Both festivals are celebrated almost at the same time of the year.These festivalss may in fact be reminiscent of old cultural and ethnological ties between Indian and Iranian branches of Aryan tribe,
Both of these festivals are started with rituals that involve Fire.Holi celebrations start on the night before Holi with a Holika Dahan where people gather, perform religious rituals in front of the bonfire, and pray that their internal evil be destroyed.
Next morning, groups of people carry drums and other musical instruments, go from place to place, sing and dance. People visit family, friends and foes come together to throw coloured powders on each other, laugh and gossip, then share Holi delicacies, food and drinks. In the evening, people dress up and visit friends and family.
Chaharshanbe Suri is a prelude to the Nowruz. it is celebrated on the eve of the last Wednesday before Nowruz. It is usually celebrated in the evening by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires.Iranians sing the poetic line "my yellow is yours, your red is mine", which means asking the fire to take away ill-health and problems and replace them with warmth, health, and energy.
During the Nowruz holidays, people are expected to make short visits to the homes of family, friends and neighbors. Visitors are offered tea and pastries, cookies, fresh and dried fruits and mixed nuts or other snacks. Many Iranians throw large Nowruz parties in as a way of dealing with the long distances between groups of friends and family.
Although both of these festivals are mainly Spring festivals but they are associated with religious or mythological deities. Holi is celebrated as a festival of triumph of good over evil in the honour of Hindu deity Vishnu. Nowruz is celebrated to honor the mythical Iranian King Jamshid, who saves mankind from a winter destined to kill every living creature.
There seems a lot of similarities between Nowruz and Holi, but now lets talk about a major difference. Holi is called festival of colors,On the main day of the festival people smear each other with colours and drench each other. Water guns and water-filled balloons are also used to play and colour each other. The frolic and fight with colours occurs in the open streets, parks, outside temples and buildings.
But in Nowruz there is no such ritual of throwing colours on each other. This seems a huge difference but there is one legend related to the hindu deity Krishna that explains this difference.
According to this legend as a baby, Krishna developed his characteristic dark skin colour .In his youth, Krishna despaired whether the fair-skinned Radha would like him because of his dark skin colour. His mother, tired of his desperation, asks him to approach Radha and ask her to colour his face in any colour she wanted. This she did, and Radha and Krishna became a couple. So, the playful colouring of Radha and Krishna's face has been commemorated in the festival of Holi.
In Iran there were almost no differences of skin color because of much racial uniformity, while in India we can see a lack of such racial uniformity, in order to remove these racial difference and to creat a sense of uniformity . people throw colors on each other by follwing the Kirishna's legend and thus remove the racial differences.
