Breaking jars to get rid of bad luck, a Nowruz ritual

One of the Nowruz age-old rituals is breaking old jars and replacing them with new ones, which is pursued in order to get rid of bad luck.

Persian New Year is concurrent with the arrival of spring and Iranians celebrate Nowruz and nature renewal at the same time.

One of the main Nowruz rituals that is performed in Iran is to clean everything, not only the homes but all the village or the city is washed and polished.

One of the age-old traditions that is cherished before Nowruz on the last Wednesday of the year is breaking jars.

In old times, Iranians broke the old jars by throwing them from the rooftops. They believed that all the negative energies, mishaps and bad luck of the past year are in the jar. They broke the old jar and replaced it with a new one.

One reason behind this ritual is that Iranians knew it’s better to use pottery not for more than a year.  Cleaning the pottery is not that much easy, so every year all the old ones were broken and replaced by new ones.

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