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Next: about 14 to 15 Jan 2027

Makar Sankranti

The January sun festival, when Maharashtrian women wear black sarees and swap sesame sweets, and kites fill Gujarat's sky.

These 'tilguls', traditional marathi laddoos eaten on Makar Sankranti day.
Photo: Saloni Desai, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What is worn for Makar Sankranti

Makar Sankranti marks the sun's entry into Capricorn, in mid January, and is the start of the sun's northward journey. It is kept as a harvest festival in many forms: Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Lohri in Punjab, Uttarayan, the great kite day, in Gujarat, and Sankranti in Karnataka and Andhra. In Maharashtra, women wear black sarees, traditionally avoided at other auspicious times, and exchange til-gul, sesame and jaggery sweets, with the words "til gul ghya, god god bola". Haldi-kumkum gatherings follow in the weeks after. The date is 14 or 15 January depending on the year and the calendar, so two days are given.

The sarees

SariBlack sarees, often with a zari border, are worn in Maharashtra for the day.PaithaniSilk sarees of Maharashtra, kept for the haldi-kumkum gatherings.
About this page

Written by the EveryPallu desk with AI assistance. Background: "Makar Sankranti" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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