I have a question for you. One of our posters at VirPed is a young Iranian, and he claims that today is something called Perna Day, an old holiday that was officially banned by the Arabs when they took over Persia (Mat Adnani says it is because the Arabs couldn't pronounce 'P's properly and so either banned or changed the name of all Persian traditions that started with 'P', including Perna).

Well, I looked it up but couldn't find anything on it. It could be that he is misspelling it, but that seems unlikely. I looked at pages that listed Iranian holidays, including ancient ones, and could nothing about December 18th or anything that sounds like Perna. It's not that I don't believe Mat--I am sure he is telling the truth. But I wondered if you knew anything about this tradition. We all love Mat at our board; he's a really sweet and big-hearted young man who has been persecuted for his sexuality in the past. I would like to offer more support to him, but I need to know more about his culture to do that. Most stuff I can research, but this one seems to be eluding me. Any help would be appreciated, and thanks in advance.