March 15, 2019
Could Haji Firuz be a racist?
With all the concern in the United States about people wearing blackface and offending African-Americans, should we take a new look at the tradition of Haji Firuz in Iran?
Iran’s version of Santa Claus has traditionally been portrayed by young men in blackface. To a visiting American, Haji Firuz looks very much like a minstrel climbing out of a Mississippi riverboat show of the 19th Century, or Al Jolson about to perform a rendition of “Maaaammie.”
Of course, Iranian culture doesn’t bear the burden of America’s history of racial tensions. Still, it had to happen that eventually some Iranian with a worldly education would question the blackface.
It happened in 1978 in Shiraz, where members of the city’s Consumer Protection Committee debated the topic. One member, identified in media reports only as Javadi, suggested that all the Haji Firuzes cavorting around the countryside that Now Ruz season were offensive to Negroes resident in Iran, mainly diplomats from Africa and men with the American military advisory mission in Iran.
Other members of the committee, however, rose to the defense of Haji Firuz, who could not possibly be a racist since his mission in life was to bring nothing but good cheer. They insisted that Persian traditions couldn’t be rewritten just because the Americans had their social problems. They looked upon Javadi as—if we can borrow from British tradition—something of a Scrooge in their midst muttering, “Bah, humbug,” about cherished Persian traditions.
Well, as history would have it, by the time the next Now Ruz rolled around in 1979, the Pahlavi Dynasty had been swept away, a new regime was in power, and matters of more immediate import were the focus of attention.
We never heard what became of Javadi and the Shiraz Consumer Protection Committee.