Facts about Sankranti

Makar Sankranti | Festival of Harvest

Our ten fascinating Facts about Sankranti will tell you about the colourful 'Harvest Festival' Makar Sankranti which is celebrated from 14 January 2025 in India.

makar sankranti

10 Sankranti Facts

Here are ten fascinating facts about Sankranti:

1. Sankranti is a harvest festival celebrated by Hindus in many regions in India. This festival is also referred to Sankranthi or Makar Sankranti. 

Sankranti is celebrated across India and thus is known by different names in different regions. Other names for the Sankranti celebrations are Pongal (as they say in Tamil Nadu), Lohri (in Punjab) or Bihu (in Assam), Uttarayan in Gujarat.

2. Pongal is an important event for Tamils around the world and as such celebrated by Tamils in many places around the globe.

When is Sankranti?

3. The main Sankranti or Pongal celebrations take place usually on 14 January. The festivities take place over three days.

In 2025, Sankranti celebrations start Tuesday, 14 January. 

4. This festival celebrates the end of winter as the Sun begins its northward journey and days start getting longer again.

The Hindu word sankranti means "transition" and refers to the sun’s journey from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere when the sun enters the zodiac sign of the Capricorn (which is "makar" in Hindi).

The Sun God is honoured and thanked for giving farmers a good harvest. 

pongal giftsGifts to the Sun God on Pongal

How is Sankranti celebrated?

5. There are unique customs and traditions of celebrating the Sankranti harvest festival in the different states to but common to all are the preparation of unique food such as pongal and ladoos, the decorations with kolams and the joyful celebrations of families that come together during these holidays. 

Often homes are decorated with special kolams, patterns made from powered colour and rice flour.

Kolams are beautiful colourful patterns and designs that are drawn on the ground. The traditional kolams are meant to welcome good luck to the home.

sankranti kolamColourful kolams - image by Reddees/shutterstock.com

6. Facts about Sankranti for Kids: The main Sankranti celebration include praying and purifying from sins in form of bathing.

Performing pooja is a Hindu worship tradition that includes lighting some lamps and incense and rotation these in front of a god or the sacred cows in the temple while also offering flowers, fruits and sweets, and chanting mantras.

People gather in their home communities to celebrate together. They eat, dance and sing together. They give presents in form of sweet baked treats to each other.

Facts about Sankranti Traditions

7. Some of the Sankranti traditions are mainly celebrated in certain states:

  • In Gujarat and Rajasthan, the people love flying colourful kites and there are even competitions to see who can keep their kite in the air the longest. In Ahmedabad you can marvel at all the different kites during the International Kite Festival that takes place during Sankranti.
sankranti kite festival mridulablogKite Flying - image by mridulablog/ shutterstock.com
  • In Punjab bonfires are lit and the community gathers around these bonfires to sing, dance, and celebrate.
  • In Tamil Nadu, families decorate their homes with beautiful kolam patterns.
  • In southern India, especially in rural areas of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, cows and bulls are decorated with paint, flower garlands, and bells. 
india pongal cowCow decorated with bells during the Pongal festival

Cattle are honoured and worshipped in India as they are essential for farming and work especially hard on the fields during the harvest season.

8. Sankranti marks also the first day of the Pilgrimage of the Hindu, called Kumbh Mela.

The pilgrimage is an annual event that is held over six weeks and brings together Hindu from all over India. This year, more than 400 million Hindus are expected to participate in the special Maha Kumbh Mela.

Every twelve years, the "Maha Kumbh Mela" is held, this is in fact the Greatest ("Maha") Pilgrimage in the world. In 2025, the event is held in Prayagraj, formerly referred to as Allahabad, a city in Uttar Pradesh in northern India.

The main tradition during this pilgrimage is for the Hindu to bath in sacred water of the holy rivers and wash off their sins and donate money and goods to the less fortunate in their communities.

Sankranti Food

9. Food is an important part of the Sankranti celebrations. Special dishes are prepared and often fresh harvest ingredients such as rice, jaggery (unrefined sugar), sesame seeds, and lentils are used to make the delicious festive treats. 

sankranti foodTraditional Sankranti sweets

10. Other delicious foods enjoyed at Makar Sankranti are:

  • Pongal: A sweet dish made from rice and lentils. The dish is often cooked with jaggery, milk, ghee and often topped with cashews and raisins. 
india_sakranti pongalPongal
  • Pongal: A sweet dish made from rice and lentils. The dish is often cooked with jaggery, milk, ghee and often topped with cashews and raisins. 
  • Puran Poli: this flatbread (poli) is filled with lentils, jaggery and cardamon and a popular sweet treat, this traditional food is very popular in Maharashtra.
  • Makki ki Roti: corn flatbread made with maize flour, water, salt and oil is typical food in Northern Indian states
  • Sarson ka Saag: dish made with creamed spinach or pureed mustard greens and spices such as chilli, garlic and ginger. The dish originally made in Punjab but now enjoyed across India
  • Tilgul: These sweet sesame seed balls are made from sesame seeds and jaggery. These are also referred to as Til Ladoo
  • Ladoo: also called Laddu, are small melt-in-the-mouth balls made with a variety of flour, sugar (jaggery) and spices. Ladoos can contain lentils or coconut, cashews, sesame seeds, dried fruits or nuts, such as peanuts, and can be baked, raw or deep fried. Ladoos are a popular sweet treat at celebrations all over India

How do families celebrate Sankranthi?

"Hello everyone, today I am going to tell you about Sankranthi celebrations. My name is Brindha, I am eight years old and I am going to tell you about my favorite Festival Sankranthi.

Sankranthi is a festival of harvest. It is celebrated to honour the year's harvest and pay respect to our ancestors. Our favorite heritage is pongal. Pongal is made of jaggery, freshly harvested rice, and cashews. Sankranti is celebrated over three days.

The first day is Bogi, the second day is Sankranthi, the main festival and the third day is Kanuma. Bogi means you burn all the dust and old things in our home, which signifies destroying bad and evil in us and filling new spirit.

The second day, Sankranthi we make pongal on firewood. Pongal is made with newly harvested rice boiled with milk and jaggery.

The third day of Kanuma is celebrated as a cattle festival. We pray and perform pooja to the farm animals which are used in agriculture as a token of gratitude. But the first two days we only eat vegetarian but the last day we feast on non-vegetarian food. We also keep food and new clothes for our ancestors to take as a tradition.

My favorite traditional food is sweet donuts in Indian style. There are many traditional games are held during this festival in our community. Some of them are bullock cart races, horse races, kite flying festivals and rangoli competitions.

On the three days of the festival, we along with the family and friends participate and celebrate with joy and happiness."


  • This Sankranthi story is by Brindha Bheemsetti from Collinz International School in Malaysia. Her home language is Telugu which is the main language spoken in Andra Pradesh. 


We hope you have enjoyed our Facts About Sankranti for Kids and wishing all our friends who celebrate a blessed Makar Sankranti

Facts about Sankranti  Resources 

  • MK Singh. "13 Unique Festivals of India". The New Indian Express. Last updated 13 January 2025. Last accessed 13 January 2025
  • Swasthi Shreekanth. "Puran Poli Recipe". IndianHealthyRecipes.com. Last updated 16 September 2023. Last accessed 13 January 2025
  • Aishwarya S Iye. "One of the world’s greatest religious spectacles is underway and the numbers are staggering." CNN. Last updated 13 January 2025. Last accessed 13 January 2025
  • Raja Sharma. "7 Interesting Makar Sankranti Facts." NarayanaSchools. Last updated 13 January 2024. Last accessed 13 January 2025

Image Credits on Facts about Sankranti: Kitefestival by Mridulablog; Rangoli/Kolam by Reddees and others from Shutterstock.com and own images

Popular Pages

vesak day facts
diwali facts header

Return from Facts about Sankranti to Kids World Travel Guide Homepage

essay competition 2024 winners

Competition Winners 2024

essay 2024 pot of noodles
essay 2024 runner-up south africa
essay 2024 seollal runner up
essay2024_japan2
essay2024 pearloftheorientseas
essay winner 2024 senior aivind
essay2024_runnerup_ramlila
essay 2024 myidealculture

Competition Winners 2023

beingtheregalbird
ocean hatchlings

Competition Winners 2022

Essay Winner 2022: Australia
Roots Winner 2022: sri lanka
Bushy Winner 2022: australia
Happiness Winner 2022: india
Judo Winner 2022: france
DreamBig Winner 2022: india
Share this page:
Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.