Happy Makara Sankranti - Festival Celebration and Offerings to Ancestors

Hello everyone! First of all I would like to wish a Happy New Year 2021 to all and I wish that this year will be a better one than last year. I would also like to wish Happy Sankranti to everyone who celebrate it.

Today is a festival day as it is Sankranti which is the Harvest Festival. It is a day dedicated to the Sun deity as for the Indians, it marks the end of the winter season and the beginning of the spring season. We generally say Makara Sankranti because Makara is the season of Capricorn which will begin tomorrow on the 15th of January. By the way, my ascendant sign is also Capricorn which means sun now will be entering my ascendant! I hope it gives me the energy and drive to be motivated and productive.

My family and I are Telugu people and in my culture, we also make offerings to the ancestors on Sankranti day. It is our belief that the gates of the heaven will be opened today and the ancestors will be able to visit their family members. It is a little like the movie Coco where Miguel meets his great grandparents.

They are my late grandparents. I remember my grandpa very well including his last moments although I was only 5 at the time. However, I never got to know my grandma as she passed away a few years before I was born. We have decorated their pictures with flowers.

We prayed to them for blessings and made offerings of vegetarian meal along with their favourite food items.

This is a meal of rice served on banana leaf with mixed vegetable curry. The side dishes are papadams, fried pumpkins, teepi burelu (sweet snacks) and milk rice.

We also included some fruits in the offering such as apples, mangoes, pears, bananas and grapes.

My grandpa liked eating nuts like these. Hence, we included some.

He also loved drinking tea. I don't know much about my grandma but one of my aunties told me that she liked to eat a type of sweet made of potatoes. It is actually one of my favourite sweets as well and I never knew my grandma liked it too. Unfortunately we didn't get it this time to offer it to my grandma.

This is the full picture of the praying altar and offering. We open the door (still locked of course) and left the hall and went into the rooms to let our ancestors to visit and have their offerings.

My mother kept the flowers in a bowl of water to retain the freshness after the prayers.

After about 30 minutes of making the offering, my father mixed the rice offered and we ate little portions of the food. This is the leftover that my mom kept for my brother who unfortunately couldn't join the prayers due to work.

Many communities actually play kites on this special day but we rarely do that here where I live. I do enjoy playing kites and did have one about half of my own body size at the time and I played with it so much it ended up breaking at a point. Happy Makar Sankranti again and I wish that all of your yearly goals will be achieved this year. Thank you for dropping by and have a great day =)