The Bahà’i community of Guyana, with those around the world, would be celebrating Naw Ruz festival today.
For them, the Naw Ruz festival is a joyous time of celebration and hospitality, coinciding with the first day of spring; it signifies spiritual renewal: “O friends! It behoveth you to refresh and revive your souls through the gracious favours which in this Divine, this soul-stirring springtime are being showered upon you.” Bahá’u’lláh the Prophet Founder of the religion affirmed.

Naw-Rùz, means “new day”. It is the Baha’i New Year, which occurs on the date of the Vernal equinox on  March 21, being linked to the lunar cycle. It is one of the nine holy days in its almanac.

Celebrations to mark the Baha’i New Year will take diverse forms throughout the world, but will characteristically include programmes of spiritual uplift, music, cultural dancing and feasting.

Events intended throughout the Guyanese community are typical of the kind of multi-cultural commemoration that will be observed in many of the over 120,000 localities where Baha’is — who embrace human diversity — reside around the world.

The festival comes at the end of a 19-day fast in which adult Baha’is refrain from food and drink between sunrise and sunset, as a reminder of the need for individuals to be detached from their material desires.

Naw-Rùz is the first day of the first of 19 months in the Baha’i calendar. That calendar was initiated by the Bab, the forerunner of the Faith’s Prophet-Founder, Baha’u’llah, who later confirmed it.