Makar Sankranti 2028: Date, Rituals & Significance

Krishna Chaturthi runs 14 Jan, 23:17 → 15 Jan, 20:11.

1. Bathe in the punya kaal. Bathe at or after the Sun's entry into Makara, inside the punya kaal given in this page's timings; a river or the sea is ideal, and at home a few black sesame seeds are added to the bath water.
2. Offer arghya to the Sun. Facing the rising Sun, pour water from a copper lota holding red flowers, akshat, a pinch of roli, sesame and a little jaggery, reciting “Om Ghrini Suryaya Namah” or the Gayatri mantra.
3. Til tarpan. Offer water with black sesame to the ancestors from the joined palms, facing south, remembering them by name.
4. Daan. Give khichdi ingredients (rice, moong dal, salt, turmeric), til-gud, ghee, a warm blanket or clothes to a Brahmin or someone in need; the day's giving is held to be especially fruitful.
5. Til-gud and the meal. Eat khichdi and exchange til-gud or til laddoos with family and neighbours.

• Copper lota
• Red flowers and roli
• Akshat (unbroken rice)
• Black and white sesame
• Jaggery
• Rice, moong dal, salt and turmeric for khichdi daan
• Ghee
• A blanket or clothes to give
• Til-gud or til laddoos

On this day the Sun begins Uttarayan: its six-month northward journey, held to be the daytime of the devas and an auspicious span; the Mahabharata's Bhishma is said to have held his life on the bed of arrows until Uttarayan began before releasing it.

It ends Dhanurmas (Kharmas), the roughly one month with the Sun in Dhanu when weddings and new ventures are paused; from Makar Sankranti they resume.

It is a harvest thanksgiving (the winter crop is in), celebrated with the new rice, jaggery, sesame and sugarcane, and with a bath in the Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari or the sea at the punya kaal, followed by daan of khichdi, til-gud, a blanket or a cow.

Sesame-and-jaggery sweets are exchanged with the words 'til-gul ghya, god god bola' (take the sweet and speak sweetly), making it a day for mending relationships; in Gujarat and the North it is above all a day of kite-flying.

Makar Sankranti's basis is astronomical rather than mythic, but stories attach to it. Surya is said to visit his estranged son Shani, who rules Makara, on this day, so it is read as a day to heal family rifts.

The Ganga, following Bhagirath's long penance, is held to have reached the sea and the ashram of the sage Kapila at Sagar Island on this tithi, redeeming the sixty thousand sons of King Sagara, which is why the Ganga Sagar Mela is held here now, one of the largest pilgrim gatherings in the country.

And Bhishma, mortally wounded but master of the hour of his own death, waited on his bed of arrows through the dark half of the year and let go only when the Sun turned north: an image of Uttarayan as the doorway the soul prefers.

Source: Mahabharata (Bhishma's death; the Bhagiratha–Sagara episode); Surya–Shani folk tradition

The Sun's monthly sidereal ingress has been reckoned since antiquity, and Makara Sankranti, the entry into Capricorn, was once the winter solstice itself, around the middle of the first millennium CE.

Because of the precession of the equinoxes the sidereal Makara Sankranti has since drifted about one day later every seventy years or so, and now falls on 14 or 15 January, roughly three weeks after the true solstice of 21–22 December, though the name Uttarayan preserves the old coincidence.

The Ganga Sagar Mela, the Gorakhnath khichdi mela at Gorakhpur, and the Tamil Pongal, the Punjabi Lohri, the Gujarati Uttarayan and the Assamese Magh Bihu are all forms of the same solar turning, each with its own long history.

• Surya Siddhanta and later karana texts: the sidereal solar ingress
• The precession of the equinoxes and the drift of the sidereal solstice (Lahiri ayanamsa)
• Ganga Sagar Mela records: among the largest annual gatherings after the Kumbh

1. A bath is taken at dawn in a river, tank or the sea (the Ganga at Sagar Island and Prayag, the Godavari at Nashik) at or after the sankranti punya kaal.
2. Daan is given, often to a Brahmin or the needy: khichdi and its ingredients (rice, moong dal, salt, turmeric), til-gud, a black blanket, firewood and, by those who can, a cow. Til-tarpan is offered to the ancestors.
3. Til-gud, til-laddoo and chikki are made and exchanged with the request to speak sweetly; women in Maharashtra hold haldi-kunku gatherings, and Gujarat and the North fly kites all day.
4. Regional forms take over: the Bhogi bonfire and Pongal's boiling-over of the new rice in the South, Lohri's fire and songs in Punjab the evening before, the meji bonfire and feasts of Magh Bihu in Assam.

• Punjab and Haryana. Lohri on the eve: the bonfire, til-rewri and gajak, the Sundar Mundriye and Dulha Bhatti songs, and the first Lohri of a new bride or a newborn; Maghi the next day. →
• Gujarat and Rajasthan. Uttarayan: two days of kite-flying with 'kai po che!', undhiyu, jalebi and chikki, and night kites with lanterns. →
• Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya Pradesh. Sankrant: til-gul and til-poli, the haldi-kunku gatherings for women with vaan (gifts), and the wearing of black, the one day it is considered auspicious.
• Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Khichdi: the khichdi mela at the Gorakhnath temple, til-laddoo, and dahi-chura-gud; a bath at Prayag on the Magh Mela's first major day.
• Tamil Nadu. Pongal, a four-day harvest festival: Bhogi, Thai Pongal (the new rice boiled until it overflows, 'Pongalo Pongal!'), Mattu Pongal for the cattle and Jallikattu, and Kaanum Pongal. →
• Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka. Three-day Sankranti: the Bhogi bonfire and Bhogi pallu, muggu/rangoli with gobbemma, Kanuma for the cattle, gangireddulu and haridasu; ellu-bella exchanged in Karnataka.
• Assam. Magh Bihu / Bhogali Bihu: the meji and bhelaghar of bamboo and thatch, community feasts of pitha and laru, and buffalo fights and egg fights in some districts. →
• West Bengal and Odisha. Poush Sankranti: pithe-puli and patishapta of rice flour, date-palm jaggery and coconut; the Ganga Sagar Mela; Odisha's Makar Chaula of new rice, banana, coconut and jaggery.

• Til-gud, til-laddoo, gajak, rewri, chikki — Sesame and jaggery in every form: exchanged with 'til-gul ghya, god god bola', and eaten to warm the body in the cold.
• Khichdi — Rice and moong dal with ghee, eaten with dahi, papad and chokha, and given in daan, so central in the east that the festival itself is called Khichdi there.
• Pongal, pithe-puli, undhiyu, dahi-chura-gud — The sweet ven pongal of the new rice; rice-flour dumplings with date jaggery in Bengal; the Gujarati mixed-vegetable undhiyu; flattened rice with curd and jaggery in Bihar.

Makar Sankranti falls on Saturday, 15 January 2028. Sun's sidereal ingress into Capricorn (Makara); also Pongal (Tamil Nadu).

at sunrise

Makar Sankranti is the moment the centre of the Sun crosses from the sidereal sign of Dhanu into Makara, Capricorn, at 270° of sidereal (Lahiri) ecliptic longitude. Because it is a solar event and not a lunar tithi, it falls on nearly the same Gregorian date every year and moves only with the precession of the equinoxes, about one day later every ~70 years; it now sits on 14 or 15 January, though it coincided with the winter solstice around the mid-first-millennium CE. The punya kaal for the snan-daan is a window of a few hours around the crossing; where the sankranti falls after sunset, the observance and the punya kaal are taken on the following day. The day also ends Dhanurmas, so weddings and new ventures resume.

Fixed to a solar ingress — the Gregorian date barely moves (a day either way as the ingress instant drifts against the civil day).