Here's how Pongal is being celebrated in India
The four-day harvest festival of Pongal , is observed in the month of Thai and is being celebrated by Indians across the world, especially in Tamil Nadu. The festival celebrates the harvesting of crops including sugarcane, rice and turmeric and falls around the same time as Lohri and Makar Sankranti in mid-January each year. It is essentially a thanksgiving festival, wherein farmers thank the nature, the Sun God and the farm animals for helping in the productions of crops, while other people thank the farmers for producing the crops. The word 'Pongal' in Tamil means to 'to boil', it is also the name of a sweet dish made out of boiled rice, moong dal, milk and jaggery, which is prepared specially to mark the harvest festival. Tamilians usually celebrate the occasion by making delicate traditional designs known as kolams in their homes with rice powder. The kolams are made to welcome goddess Lakshmi, who is believed to bring wealth, prosperity and happiness