Are you a guerilla gardener? A veganic farmer? A women’s rights activist? A lover of the Earth? A voice for the children? A climate justice defender? A labor organizer? An animal liberationist? A immigrant rights advocate? Or maybe a dreamer, a helper, a make-things-betterer? If so, join us in casting our hopes, goals and visions on the night that the light returns.

Shabe Yalda is an age-old Iranian celebration of the winter solstice. On the longest night of the year, families and friends stay up eating pomegranate, watermelon and other fruits and snacks as they chat, tell stories, read poetry… and celebrate the return of the light as it triumphs over darkness.

While there is darkness in the world right now, this is an opportunity to enjoy a moment together and weave visions of light into the coming months. Each person is encouraged (but not required) to read a poem. It would be ideal to choose a poem that speaks to an issue you care about or that helps plant a seed of the world you would like to see. You can choose to sing a song instead. If you are a gardener or farmer and your plants are your poetry, you are welcome to share some pictures. If you choose this option, please think of it as a 2-3 min “show and tell” rather than a “presentation”.

If your poem or song is not in English, please have a translation or brief explanation prepared beforehand.

We also encourage you to have some pomegranate, watermelon, or other vegan treats. If you’d like to try your hand at an Iranian dessert, Shole Zard is an easy one to make!

This is a casual, social event, not a webinar or educational event. You are not required to read a poem but we will ask that everyone turn on their camera and briefly introduce themselves. If few people show up, the event will be short and sweet. If more people show up, we will limit the number of contributions per person and still keep it pretty brief.

Let’s warm up the longest night with good company, and let’s cast our seeds into the future with song and poetry so that we can sow the world that we want to see.

We hope you will join us from wherever you are!

NOTE: If you google “Shabe Yalda”, you might see that on this night, Iranians read poems by Hafez (especially for “fal giry” which is a form of reading). If you google “Hafez” or go to an American bookstore, you might come across books that say “by Hafiz” and “translated by Daniel Ladinsky” (such as “The Gift”). These are not translations but original poems by Daniel Ladinsky. They have no connection to anything written by Hafez, whose name Ladinsky simply appropriated. Many people love these books and you are very welcome to read poems from them, but if you do, please introduce them as written by Daniel Ladinsky, not Hafez (or “Hafiz”).

Similarly, most of the poems by Rumi in English that circulate online are renderings by Coleman Barks that are very far from the originals. This situation is less egregious than the one with Ladinsky because Coleman Barks did at least start off with translations of actual poems by Rumi, which he then re-crafted, but these renderings are nonetheless far from the originals and tailored to a Western audience that has an aversion to Islam. If you are interested in Rumi, we encourage you to also look up translations by other authors.