Written by Sizdah Bedar: The 13th-Day Picnic Where Millions Return to Nature, Knot Grass for Wishes, and Release the Old Year into Running Water
April 2, 2026
Thirteen days after the spring equinox, the entire nation of Iran goes outside.
Not some of them. Not the ones who feel like it. Virtually the entire country. Highways clog. Parks fill to capacity. Riversides, meadows, hillsides, forests, and every patch of green within driving distance become the site of one of the largest outdoor gatherings on the planet.
Families bring blankets, pillows, samovars, portable grills, rice pots, bags of herbs, bowls of soup, instruments, speakers, and children. They cook. They eat. They dance. They play games. They laugh in a way that sounds like a national exhale — thirteen days of celebration releasing their final breath into the open air.
Then, before they leave, they take the sprouted greens from their Nowruz table and throw them into running water. And the young people tie knots in blades of grass, whisper wishes into the knots, and let them go.
This is Sizdah Bedar — the thirteenth day out. And it is the most beautiful ending to a holy season that most of the world doesn’t know exists.
What Is Sizdah Bedar?
Sizdah Bedar falls on the thirteenth day of Farvardin — the first month of the Persian calendar — which in 2026 corresponds to April 2. The name translates roughly to “getting rid of thirteen” or “thirteen outdoors” — sizdah meaning thirteen, bedar meaning out toward the open, toward the valley, toward nature.
It is the final day of the Nowruz holiday. The closing ceremony. And the tradition demands one thing above all else: go outside. Leave your house. Spend the entire day in nature. Rain or shine, cold or warm — you go.
The logic is rooted in ancient belief: on the thirteenth day, whatever negative energy remains from the old year must be expelled. The way you expel it is by leaving your home — where you’ve been celebrating, feasting, and visiting for nearly two weeks — and giving your body and your spirit to the earth. Nature absorbs what needs to be released. The outdoors heals what indoors cannot.
The Rituals of the Thirteenth Day
The Sabzeh Release: Throughout the thirteen days of Nowruz, the sabzeh — sprouted wheat, barley, lentils, or mung beans — has sat on the Haft-sin table, growing greener as the holiday progresses. The tradition holds that the sabzeh has been absorbing the household’s negativity during its time in the home. On Sizdah Bedar, families take the sabzeh to a river, stream, or any body of flowing water and release it. As the green sprouts drift downstream, they carry away the old year’s hardships. The cycle is complete: life grew from seed in the home, absorbed what needed to leave, and was returned to nature to be transformed.
The Grass Knots: This is the tradition that stays with you. Young single people — especially young women, though everyone participates — go out into the grass, select two long blades, and tie them together in a knot. While tying, they whisper a wish. The classic wish is for love — for a partner, a marriage, a connection. But any wish works. The knot represents the bond between desire and destiny. Once tied, the knot is either cast into water with the sabzeh or left in the grass to be carried by wind. You speak what you want into the living earth, bind it with your hands, and release it.
There’s a folk song that young women sing while knotting the grass: “Sal-e digar, man dar khane-ye shohar, bacheh be baghal” — “Next year, you’ll find me in my husband’s house, a baby in my arms.” It’s playful. It’s hopeful. It’s three thousand years of people asking the earth for the same thing: love, family, continuity.
The Pranks — Dorugh-e Sizdah: Sizdah Bedar has its own version of April Fools’ Day, called Dorugh-e Sizdah — the Lie of the Thirteenth. People play lighthearted practical jokes on each other throughout the day. The timing is striking: Sizdah Bedar often falls on or near April 1. Whether the Western April Fools’ tradition shares a common ancestor with Dorugh-e Sizdah is debated, but the overlap in both timing and concept is hard to dismiss as coincidence.
The Feast: The food of Sizdah Bedar is picnic food, but elevated to an art form. Families grill kebabs over portable fires. Ash-e reshteh — the thick noodle-and-herb soup — is cooked in massive pots outdoors. Kookoo sabzi — the herbed egg dish — is served cold. Lettuce is dipped in sekanjabin, a vinegar-honey-mint syrup that has been a Persian drink for millennia. Ajeel — the sacred nut-and-dried-fruit mix — is passed around. Tea flows continuously from the samovar. The food is communal, abundant, and deliberately simple in preparation but rich in flavor — the opposite of indoor formality. You eat on the ground, with your hands if you want, surrounded by family and grass and sky.
The Games: Traditional games are central to Sizdah Bedar. In rural areas, horse games were historically played — the thirteenth of Farvardin was associated with Tir, the Zoroastrian deity of rain, depicted as a horse. Competitive games involving horses were understood as honoring Tir and asking for rain to nourish the new year’s crops. Today, the games are more varied — soccer, badminton, wrestling, dance-offs, races — but the spirit remains: physical joy, expressed communally, in the open air.
Why the Thirteenth Day?
The number thirteen has an uneasy reputation across cultures. In much of the Western world, it’s considered unlucky — Friday the 13th, no 13th floor in buildings, triskaidekaphobia as a named condition.
Iranian tradition takes a different approach. Rather than avoiding the thirteenth day, you confront it. You go outside. You face whatever negative energy the number carries. And you neutralize it with joy, community, nature, and the deliberate release of everything you no longer want to carry.
There’s a profound wisdom in this. The Western response to the unlucky thirteen is avoidance — skip the number, pretend it doesn’t exist. The Persian response is engagement — go outside on the thirteenth day, laugh, eat, play, tie your wishes into the grass, and throw the old year into the river.
One tradition fears the difficult day. The other celebrates through it.
The End of the Season
Sizdah Bedar closes a cycle that began weeks earlier with Khane Tekani — the shaking of the house. Consider the full arc:
You cleaned your home from top to bottom, driving out the old year’s residue (Khane Tekani).
You honored your dead, welcoming the fravashis back during the ten days of Muktad.
You passed through fire, exchanging your weakness for strength on Chaharshanbe Suri.
You welcomed the light on the equinox, celebrating the triumph of Asha over Druj at Nowruz.
You set the Haft-sin table with seven symbols of renewal and watched the sabzeh sprout green from nothing.
You celebrated the prophet’s birth on Khordad Sal, honoring the man who first articulated the cosmic battle between truth and falsehood.
You visited your elders, strengthening the bonds of family and community over thirteen days of feasting and fellowship.
And now, on the thirteenth day, you go outside. You return the sabzeh to nature. You tie your wishes into the grass. You eat on the ground. You play. You laugh. You release everything — the old year, the negativity, the accumulated weight — into running water and open air.
Then you go home. And the new year has truly begun.
A Tradition That Won’t Die
Sizdah Bedar has survived conquest, forced conversion, revolution, and governmental suppression. The Islamic Republic has at various times discouraged aspects of the Nowruz season, and yet every year, on the thirteenth of Farvardin, the parks of Tehran and Isfahan and Shiraz and Tabriz and every village and town in between fill with millions of people doing exactly what their ancestors did three thousand years ago: going outside, eating together, knotting grass, and letting the old year go.
This is what a tradition looks like when it’s real — when it’s not performed for tourists or preserved in museums but lived by millions of people who do it because it works. Because going outside on the thirteenth day and laughing and eating and releasing the sabzeh into the river genuinely makes you feel like the new year has started. Because tying a knot in the grass and whispering a wish genuinely gives you hope. Because the arc from cleaning the house to returning the greens to the water genuinely feels like a completed cycle — a full breath, in and out, old year and new.
This is Asha. Not as philosophy. As practice. As lived experience. As grass tied into a knot and thrown into a stream by a girl making a wish on the thirteenth day of spring.
Let it go. The water knows where to take it.
This is Part 4 of “The Stolen Calendar” — a series on how Zoroastrian time, traditions, and practices shaped the world and were erased from it.
Previously: “Shaking the House” — Khane Tekani and the Zoroastrian origin of spring cleaning
The Complete Series
Series 1: The March Holy Season
- “The Dead Are Visiting Right Now” — Muktad and the Festival of Souls
- “The Day Light Wins” — Nowruz and the Zoroastrian New Year
- “The Man Who Invented Morality” — Khordad Sal and the birth of Zarathustra
- “The Theological Heist” — How every Abrahamic concept traces back to Zoroastrianism
Series 2: The Stolen Calendar 5. “December Is the Tenth Month” — How the calendar proves the year starts in March 6. “The Night They Jump Over Fire” — Chaharshanbe Suri and the Festival of Fire 7. “Shaking the House” — Khane Tekani and the origin of spring cleaning 8. “Tie the Grass and Let It Go” — Sizdah Bedar and the closing of the holy season
The Exhibit 9. “The Erased Faith” — Investigative report on the destruction of Zoroastrianism 10. “Exhibit A: The Magi in the Machine” — Full transcript of an AI confronting Zoroastrian truth
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