Makar Sankranti 2027: Sun’s Entry into Capricorn, Punya Kaal and Customs

The Sun’s turn north: meaning and legends

A sankranti is the Sun’s passage from one zodiac sign into the next, and of the twelve in a year, the crossing into Capricorn is the one India celebrates most widely. It is a harvest and a winter festival at once, arriving when sesame and sugarcane are ready and the days are lengthening. Tradition counts Uttarayana, the Sun’s northward course and the brighter half of the year, from here. The day also closes Kharmas, the Sun’s month in Dhanu (Sagittarius), when many North Indian families put off weddings.

In a popular telling, Surya spends a month in the house of his son Shani (Saturn), lord of Capricorn, and the visit is read as a reconciliation between a father and son usually at odds. The Mahabharata offers a more solemn image: Bhishma, wounded at Kurukshetra and able to choose the hour of his death, waited on his bed of arrows for Uttarayana before giving up his body. Under every regional name the core is the same: an early bath, water offered to the Sun, generous giving and sesame-jaggery sweets.

Why the date is fixed by the Sun, not a tithi

Nearly every Hindu festival is pinned to a tithi, a lunar day set by the Moon’s angle from the Sun, so its Gregorian date wanders by weeks. Makar Sankranti is the exception: a solar event, it lands on 14 or 15 January in almost every year. With no tithi involved there is no amanta or purnimanta naming question, and the tithi running that day simply varies.

The date does creep, slowly. Vedic astronomy measures the signs against the fixed stars (the sidereal zodiac), while the seasons follow the equinoxes, which slide backwards through precession, so the sidereal ingress drifts later by about a day every seventy years. Some seventeen centuries ago it coincided with the winter solstice; today the Sun’s astronomical turn north comes around 21 December, though tradition still counts Uttarayana from the ingress.

The governing time is the ingress itself. The hours after it form the punya kaal, the meritorious window for bathing and giving, with a shorter maha punya kaal immediately after the crossing. If the Sun enters Capricorn after sunset, the observance moves to the next day. That rule, plus small differences in the ayanamsha (the precession correction) used by panchang makers, is why a search for “Makar Sankranti kab hai” can turn up two dates. This page computes the ingress and punya kaal for New Delhi.

Holy bath, arghya and daan: the day’s rituals

The day starts before sunrise with a bath, ideally in a river. It is a principal bathing day of the Magh Mela at Prayagraj, and pilgrims crowd Sagar Island in West Bengal, where the Ganga meets the sea, for the Gangasagar fair. At home, a little Ganga water and a few sesame seeds go into the bathwater.

Next comes arghya: facing the rising Sun, water is poured in a thin stream from a copper vessel holding red flowers, unbroken rice, sesame and a little jaggery or kumkum, with “Om Suryaya Namah” or the Gayatri mantra. A short puja to Surya follows, with a ghee lamp and the foods of the day: khichdi of new rice and lentils, til-gud laddoos, gajak or rewri.

Giving is the heart of the festival. Sesame, jaggery, uncooked rice and dal for khichdi, blankets, warm clothes and ghee go to priests and to anyone in need during the coldest weeks, and in many families the daan is made before anyone eats.

Customs to keep and things to avoid

Traditionally people bathe before eating, give before feasting, wear warm new clothes and call on elders with sweets. Sesame turns up everywhere, in the bathwater, the gifts, the laddoos and the lamp oil. Maharashtra’s til-gul carries a request to speak sweetly all year, and many households keep quarrels and harsh words out of the day.

In many homes the food stays vegetarian and alcohol is kept away, and those who cannot reach a river bathe at home rather than skip the bath. Kite flyers are urged to avoid glass-coated and nylon string, which injures birds and two-wheeler riders and is banned in many cities, and to keep children off rooftops without a parapet.

One festival, many names across India

Punjab and Haryana begin the night before with Lohri, a bonfire fed with sesame, rewri, peanuts and popcorn, celebrated with extra warmth for a baby’s or a newly married couple’s first Lohri. Gujarat’s Uttarayan fills the rooftops with kites, undhiyu and chikki. In Maharashtra til-gul is shared with “tilgul ghya, god god bola” (take sesame and jaggery, speak sweetly), and married women host haldi-kunku gatherings, often dressed in black, a colour otherwise kept away from festivals.

Tamil Nadu’s four-day Pongal opens the month of Thai: Bhogi burns out the old, on Thai Pongal rice and milk boil over in a new pot to cries of “Pongalo Pongal”, Mattu Pongal honours the cattle and Kaanum Pongal is for family outings. Karnataka exchanges ellu-bella (sesame, jaggery, coconut and groundnut) and decorates its cattle; Andhra Pradesh and Telangana spread Sankranti over several days, opening with Bhogi; Sabarimala in Kerala celebrates Makaravilakku.

Assam’s Magh or Bhogali Bihu opens with the Uruka feast night and ends with the Meji bonfire at dawn. Bengal’s Poush Sankranti means pithe-puli, rice-flour sweets filled with coconut and date-palm jaggery. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar call the day Khichdi, offered at the Gorakhnath temple in Gorakhpur, and Bihar eats dahi-chura (curd with flattened rice) with tilkut. Himachal Pradesh keeps Magha Saaji, and Nepal celebrates Maghe Sankranti.

Makar Sankranti in Vedic astrology

Capricorn is Saturn’s sign, so the festival is literally the Sun entering his son’s house, and because the two are natural enemies in the classical scheme, the reconciliation story has a point. Capricorn is also Mars’ sign of exaltation, and its emblem, the crocodile-like makara of the waters, names both sign and festival. At the ingress the Sun stands in Uttarashadha nakshatra, presided over by the Vishvedevas.

Classical reckoning counts Uttarayana from Makara to the end of Mithuna (Gemini). Many muhurta traditions keep the hours around any sankranti for bathing, giving and prayer rather than new ventures, and once Kharmas ends North Indian panchangs list wedding muhurats again, subject to the usual checks on Jupiter and Venus. Being solar, the day’s tithi and the Moon’s nakshatra change every year, and regional solar calendars open a new month here, Thai in Tamil Nadu and Makaram in Kerala.