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When is Thai Pongal Celebrated? Thai Pongal is celebrated on January 14th every year. The month of Thai (January) is the harvest season in the Tamil homeland spanning from Tamil Nadu to Tamil Eelam. Pongal refers to rice cooked in milk and sweetened with brown sugar (chakkarai, from which the English word jaggery is derived).
On a full scale it is a three-day festival of nature-worship. It includes feeding the birds that are part of the beauty of nature, and offering thanks to the cattle, Mattu Pongal, which gives milk and plough the fields. Jallikattu is a peaceful sport involving bulls celebrated by young men as a part of 3-day Thai Pongal.
Thai Pongal:
Thai Pongal is celebrated on the first day of the month Thai of the Tamil calendar. The day normally falls between 12th and 15th of the month of January in the Christian calendar. Thus, Thai is the first month of the Tamil Almanac, and Pongal is a dish of sweet concoction of rice, moong dal, jaggery and milk. This festival is celebrated by one and all as it is non-relevance to any particular religious faith. The whole Tamil population of the world celebrate it without any differences. Therefore it is widely known as “Tamil Thai Pongal” or the “Festival of the Tamils“.
The Tamil festival of Thai Pongal is a thanks giving ceremony in which the farmers celebrate the event to thank the spirits of nature spirit, the Sun and the farm animals for their assistance in providing a successful harvest. The rest of the people celebrate the festival to pay their thanks to the farmers for the production of food. Overall, it is a festival to encourage social cohesiveness and unite people by bringing them together in a common function. There are many songs about Thai Pongal and there is much Tamil literature about it.
How Pongal is celebrated?
Pongal is celebrated with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm across the country, especially in Tamil Nadu. Special fairs and events are organized to celebrate this harvest festival. People also perform various kinds of pujas to seek Sun God’s blessings and thank nature for providing crucial resources.
Special food items like medu vada, avial, rasam, beetroot pachadi, sakkarai pongal and moong dal payasam are also prepared during the four days of Pongal.
However, the celebrations of Pongal have been massively hit this year because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has affected more than 1 crore people and claimed over 1.50 lakh lives in India so far. Due to the pandemic, we would request to stay inside your houses and follow COVID-19 norms while celebrating the beautiful festival of Pongal.
