Pongal festival is a harvest festival celebrated by the people of TamilNadu at the end of harvest season. It coincides with the festival Makara Sankranthi celebrated throughout India as the winter harvest. The word pongal itself refers to the "boiling over" of milk and rice during the month of Thai. Farmers work for the whole year harvesting the paddy crops and using the freshly produced rice, farmers will prepare pongal on this auspicious day and show their gratitude to Lord Surya. On this festival day, the sun god(Suriyan) will turn from southern direction to northern direction. It is a tradition for tamilians to decorate their homes with banana and mango leaves and embellish the floor with decorative patterns drawn using rice flour.
Pongal Festival is a 3 day festival which starts from the last day of the tamil calender month Margazhi and proceed till the second day of the Tamil Calender month Thai. The first day of the festival is called Bogi followed by Thai Pongal and ends with Kanu Pongal.
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| Bhogi | Thai Pongal | Kanu Pongal |
In earlier days Thai Pongal is prepared in a hand made pot which is decorated fully with turmeric, kumkum and sunnaambu. we need to tie turmeric plant with leaves and turmeric around the pot. Nowadays we are preparing pongal in cooker and hence we need to decorate the pressure cooker accordingly. While we get the whistles, we need to tell "PongaloPongal" and pray to god.
We need to prepare the sakkaraipongal, vadai, plain rice for neivedhyam and we need to do the neivedhyam only at the time when "Thai" months begins.
We have use flat beans, pumpkin, sakaraivellikizhangu, senaikizhangu, raw banana vegetables on this occasion.
In a open place, where we get good sun rays, we need to clean the place and put kolam and inside the kolam we need to draw sun and moon symbols and we need to performpoojas for vinayakar and suriyan and we need to keep sugarcane, sakaraipongal, beetle leaves with seeds, banana and other dishes for neivedhyam and we need to pray to god for good prosperty in life.
Wish you a very happy Pongal.!
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| Medhu Vadai | Pongal Kootu |
Pongal Varieties:
