Talk:Yaldā Night/Archive 1

message: Mithra was not a Sun God, he was a God of Contracts and agreements. MarcusGraly 23:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: The article sounds a bit too nationalistic and "Perso-centric" to me. I am a Persian speaking Iranian, don't get me wrong, but despite the fact that calling it "Persian" excludes Medes and Parthians and those other Iranians, it also takes it away from its real origins. 
One has to notice that "agricultural" celebrations such as Yalda are a characteristic of settled, agricultural societies. So, one has to realise that the Indo-European Iranians, who were pastoral nomads, scarecely had a reason to celebrate it, and they certainly didn't do it "6,000" years ago, as the article claims, since they probably arrived on the plateau about 3,500 years ago themselves.
In reality, the roots of this celebration is in the Mesopotamian and Southwestern Iranian cultures of Babylonia and Elam. These were settled, agricultural societies who put a great emphasis on calendar keeping to regulate their farming and prepare for annual floods and monsoons. As such, they figured out the longest night of the year (the Yalda) and since starting the next day (Iranian calendar Dey 1st) the day would become longer, they celebrated it as the "birthday" of their sun god (Shamash in Babylon). It is only after coming into contact with Elamites that the newly settled Iranian tribes adopted the celebration. 
So, although this is certainly one of the most prominent Iranian celebrations of today, it should not be exclusively attributed to the "Persians" and its origins should be cleared out. A celebration based on a calendar usually originates in a population who cared about calendars and originated them, and in that sense, Mesopotamians and Elamites stand out!--Khodadad 19:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Babylonian Origin 

message: This article was based upon the a blacklisted URL http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Celebrations/yalda.htm, which itself is (apparently) plagiarized (with WP:FRINGE "embellishments") from Massoume Price's actual article (seen here,here, etc).  The point is that much of the text is plagiarized without attribution at the current time.  While I have removed the cais-soas based embellishments (did I miss anything?), the article still plagiarized Price's article and hence needs a rewrite.  I invite others to help with this, though if nothing happens I will eventually do it myself.  Also, I suspect that the topic has been treated in more sources than Price alone, so perhaps the rewrite should use some other sources as well.  Thanks.  The Behnam 23:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've effectively restarted from scratch. For the moment I only had Price's text as a source, but I'll keep an eye out. -- Fullstop 00:44, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism note 

message: This article was based upon the a blacklisted URL http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Celebrations/yalda.htm, which itself is (apparently) plagiarized (with WP:FRINGE "embellishments") from Massoume Price's actual article (seen here,here, etc).  The point is that much of the text is plagiarized without attribution at the current time.  While I have removed the cais-soas based embellishments (did I miss anything?), the article still plagiarized Price's article and hence needs a rewrite.  I invite others to help with this, though if nothing happens I will eventually do it myself.  Also, I suspect that the topic has been treated in more sources than Price alone, so perhaps the rewrite should use some other sources as well.  Thanks.  The Behnam 23:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've effectively restarted from scratch. For the moment I only had Price's text as a source, but I'll keep an eye out. -- Fullstop 00:44, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism note 

message: The History section contains the world "calibration" in a sentence where the world "celebration" would seem to fit. I'll change this.Birdbrainscan (talk) 17:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Calibration? 

message: آیا میدانید که کلمۀ یلدا از ریشۀ «میلاد» و «وَ لَـــدَ» به معنای بدنیا آمدن از زبان عربی گرفته شده؟ شب یلدا سه روز قبل از کریسمس میباشد و ما در اصل در شب یلدا تولد دوبارۀ عیسی مسیح را در ایران جشن میگیریم. یک دلیل تاریخی و فرهنگی مبنی بر اینکه ایرانیان قبل از یورش اعراب مسیحی بودند
Did you know "Yalda" is in weight of "fa'laa" in Arabic, with root of "Yalda" meaning Birth? "Yalda night" is about 3 days before christmas day and in fact we are celebrating Jesus's upcoming birthday in IRAN. So Iranians were Christian before the attack of Arabs.
I don't really think a Persian paragraph should be in English Wikipedia. Besides, the information given in this text is incorrect: 1) there is not arabic grammar that explains how Yalda can be taken from Valad. 2) The word "Yalda" was used before influence of Arabs on Persian language. 3) The opposite is true, Christians before becoming Christians were Mithraists, hence the similarity.
The word Yalda predate Christianity and it is a nation wide festival celebrated by all Iranians who were not all Christians. Majority of Iranians were Zoroastrians, so assuming this word come from Syriac is wrong. There is an old Indo-European winter festival that can explain the world completely. It is called Yule or Jule (pronounced yule) in Germanic paganism, and Koleda which is the Slavic version of that. A close look shows Yalda is truly the connection between both word. 
Yule (Germanic)=> Yalda (Iranic) => Koleda (Slavic). (You may observe the shift from Y to K in Slavic and the Y shared sound in both Iranic and Germanic.
I have added sources from Iran Chamber Society, which has provided the most comprehensive and sober view of Yalda festival, which in general, there is limited scholarly knowledge regarding. 2601:882:100:D7B0:6D85:5BE5:AD6E:428D (talk) 14:14, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove text 

message: There were some  that included the removal of the infobox and categories. Could someone with knowledge of the subject take a close look at them and decide whether they're helpful or not? I will revert them in a few days, unless someone speaks up for them. Ibadibam (talk) 22:02, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please review changes