Makar Sankranti
14 January 2026 · movable holiday — The kites are up! The kites are up! Happy Makar Sankranti!
Makar Sankranti is one of India's oldest solar festivals. It is observed on the day the Sun enters Capricorn (Makara in Sanskrit) according to the Indian sidereal calendar. Traditionally the day marks the start of Uttarayana, the Sun's apparent journey northward; astronomically the turn happens earlier, at the winter solstice around 21 December, but the Indian sidereal calendar celebrates it now. The festival usually falls on 14 or 15 January and is among the few Indian festivals that follow the solar rather than the lunar calendar. It has many regional names: Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Maghi in Punjab (where bonfires are lit for Lohri the evening before), Magh Bihu in Assam. In Gujarat the sky fills with kites, and rooftops host lively kite-fighting contests where rivals try to cut each other's strings using glass-coated thread. People bathe in rivers, share food and make sweets from sesame and jaggery (unrefined cane sugar), such as tilgul and chikki. The festival marks the end of the coldest months and the start of the harvest season.
Flying across the sky: An ethereal, bluish-silver flock of kites drawn as constellations of bright dots and fine connecting lines, their long tails trailing like streams of tiny stars
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