Mehrgan

Mehregān مهرگان
Mehregan Table at Persian Festival of Autumn in the Netherlands, 2011
Also called	Jašn-e Mehr (Persian: جشن مهر‎‎)
Observed by	Iran  CAN
Date	October 1, 2
Frequency	annual

Mehregān (Persian: مهرگان‎‎ or Jašn-e Mehr جشن مهر Mithra Festival) is a Zoroastrian and Persian festival celebrated to honor the yazata Mithra (Persian: Mehr‎‎), which is responsible for friendship, affection and love. It is also widely referred to as the Persian Festival of Autumn.

According to the The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism (2015), it was originally a feast honoring the Persian god Mithra. By the 4th century BCE, it was observed as one of the name-day feasts, a form it retains in today. Still, in a predominantly Muslim Iran, it is one of the two pre-Islamic festivals that continue to be celebrated by the public at large: Mehrgān, dedicated to Mithra (modern Mehr), and Tirgan, dedicated to Tishtrya (modern Tir).

Name-day feasts are festivals celebrated on the day of the year when the day-name and month-name dedicated to a particular angel or virtue intersect. The Mehr day in the Mehr month corresponded to the day farmers harvested their crops. They thus also celebrated the fact God had given them food to survive the coming cold months.

Irrespective of which calendar is observed, Mehrgān falls on the 196th day of the calendar year. For details on how this date is calculated, see basis for the date, below. For calendars that have March 21 as Nowruz or New Year's Day (i.e. in the Fasili and Bastani variants of the Zoroastrian calendar as well as in the Iranian civil calendar), Mehrgān falls on October 2. For the Shahanshahi variant of the Zoroastrian calendar, which in 2006–2007 has New Year's Day on August 20, Mehrgān fell on March 3 of the following Gregorian year. For the Kadmi variant, which has New Year's Day 30 days earlier, Mehrgān falls on February 1.