An ancient Iranian festival that basically celebrates the coming of the winter solstice and the longest night of the year for centuries is Yalda Night (or Shab-e Yalda; also, Shab-e Chelleh).

It refers to a time between the sunset of autumn’s last day (the 30th of Azar in the Iranian calendar) and the sunrise of the first day of winter (the 1st of Dey in the Iranian calendar).

It is considered as one of the holy nights and one of the most important festivities in ancient Iran and officially entered the official calendar of the ancient Iranians from 502 BC during the time of Darius I, commonly known as Darius the Great.

Yalda Night, both before and after Islam, has a special place in Iranian culture and has always been considered a motivation for gathering close and distant relatives. The festivities that take place on this night are an ancient tradition.

Since days get longer and nights to get shorter in winter, Iranians celebrate the last night of autumn as the renewal of the sun and the victory of light over darkness.

If we review the history of Yalda, we can find that in ancient times people used to gather around the fire and celebrate the night. Around the past thirty or forty years, Iranians used to sit around a Korsi (a type of low table found in Iran, with a heater underneath it, and blankets thrown over it), and nowadays, people are using heaters and other kinds of heating devices in their houses. Yalda is now celebrated by Iranians in a form of an overnight family gathering.

On Yalda Night, people gather in groups of friends or relatives usually at the home of grandparents or the elderly to celebrate the longest night of the year. As storytelling is an entertaining tradition of Yalda Night, the elders entertain the others by telling them tales and anecdotes, MNA wrote.

Reading 'Shahnameh' and poems from 'Divan-e-Hafiz' is the other Iranian tradition in this ancient Iranian festival. Each of the members of a family or a group of friends makes a wish-while keeping it a secret- and randomly opens the Divan-e-Hafiz; then the eldest member of the family or friends reads the randomly selected poem loudly. Since the poem is believed to be the interpretation of the wish and the way it would come true, it is fun to interpret the poem and guess the wishes others make.