🇮🇳How does India mark Harvest and Gratitude?

Pongal / Thai Pongal

Local date

January 15, 2027–January 18, 2027

When is it?

Around the first day of the month of Thai in the Tamil calendar, a four-day festival period

Pongal is the Tamil harvest festival of South India, four days long, timed by the Tamil calendar and the sun's entry into Capricorn, usually falling in mid-January. The festival is named after the dish: newly harvested rice boiled with milk and jaggery until it spills over the rim, and the overflowing is read as a sign of abundance. Each of the four days has its own object — the sun, the cattle that pull the plough, the household, the neighbours — so it is at once an agricultural festival, a thanks to working animals, and a round of family visits. Other regions of India mark the same window under different names.