Lohri 2012

Lohri is a festival observed according to the Hindu calendar. Its date and customary practices can vary by region and local Panchang.

Lohri is a Punjabi winter bonfire festival celebrated in mid-January as the season changes and rabi crops grow. Families and neighbours gather around a fire, share sesame, jaggery, peanuts and popcorn, sing songs and perform bhangra or gidda. Newly married couples and families welcoming a child sometimes receive special blessings, although the occasion belongs to the whole community.

Punjabi folk songs, particularly Sundar Mundariye, remember Dulla Bhatti, popularly depicted as a figure who resisted oppression and aided girls threatened by exploitation. The details belong to layered oral traditions, not an entirely verified biography. Lohri thus connects seasonal gratitude with folklore, generosity and the bonds of neighbourhood.

The festival generally falls on 13 January, near Maghi and Makara Sankranti. Its local fixed-date custom does not always follow a calculated one-day offset from the Sun's Makara entry. A calendar should check the regional civil observance independently rather than assume the astronomical rule always identifies it.

Lohri is valued for devotion, family tradition and the spiritual or seasonal meaning attached to the day.

A bonfire is lit after dark and circled, and sesame, gur, popcorn and rewri are thrown into it and handed round. The first Lohri after a wedding or a birth is kept large by that family. Sarson da saag and makki di roti are eaten, and the next morning is Maghi.

Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and Jammu. It falls the evening before Makar Sankranti, so the same turn of the sun is Lohri here, Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Magh Bihu in Assam and Uttarayan in Gujarat - four different festivals of one astronomical event.