Makara Saṅkrānti — the one festival fixed to the Sun
The popular claimEvery other festival on this site follows the Moon. This one follows the Sun, and in 2027 the Sun crosses after dark.
Most of the festivals on this site are fixed by the Moon: a tithi has to be present in some part of the day. Makara Saṅkrānti is fixed by the Sun, and that changes the shape of the rule entirely.
What a saṅkrānti is
The sidereal zodiac used in Indian astronomy divides the ecliptic into twelve signs of thirty degrees, measured from a fixed point among the stars — this site, like most of India, uses the Lahiri ayanāṁśa to place that point. A saṅkrānti is the instant the Sun's longitude crosses from one sign into the next. There are twelve a year. Makara Saṅkrānti is the crossing into Makara, Capricorn, at sidereal longitude 270 degrees.
An instant has no duration, so the observance is attached to a window around it called the puṇya-kāla. The nibandhas give it as a span of ghaṭikās on either side of the crossing — sixteen is the common figure, about six and a half hours — but they also lay down what happens when the crossing falls when the Sun is down.
The night rule
If the saṅkrānti occurs after sunset, the puṇya-kāla is taken on the following morning, from sunrise. If it occurs before sunset, the puṇya-kāla is the same day. The Dharmasindhu states this for all saṅkrāntis and Makara is the one people notice, because it is the one with a festival attached.
2027, computed
The Sun reaches sidereal 270 degrees at 15:40 UTC on Thursday 14 January 2027 — this site's engine, from the Swiss Ephemeris, Lahiri ayanāṁśa.
- Delhi: that is 9:10 PM on the 14th, three hours after sunset. The night rule applies, and the puṇya-kāla is the morning of Friday 15 January, from sunrise at about 7:15 AM.
- Toronto: the same instant is 10:40 AM on the 14th, mid-morning. The puṇya-kāla is the same day: Thursday 14 January.
Two cities, one instant, different dates. Neither is approximating: the instant is identical to the second, and the rule is identical. What differs is the clock on the wall at the moment the Sun crosses.
Why it is not on the solstice
Makara Saṅkrānti is often described as the day the Sun turns north — the start of uttarāyaṇa. It was, once. The winter solstice, the true turning of the Sun, falls around 21 December. The sidereal sign boundary drifts against the solstice by about one day every seventy-two years, because of the precession of the equinoxes, and the two have now separated by some twenty-four days. Makara Saṅkrānti still marks the Sun's entry into the sidereal sign; it no longer marks the solstice, and it moves about a day later every seventy-odd years. That is why it fell on 13 January a century ago and will fall on 15 January more often than not by the end of this one.
The festival's meaning — the Sun beginning its return — is the solstice's meaning. The date is the sign boundary's date. Both are true; they are answers to different questions, and a page that says "the Sun turns north today" is a few weeks late.
Poṅgal, Uttarāyaṇ, Māgh Bihu
The same instant is kept under other names: Thai Poṅgal in Tamil Nadu, Uttarāyaṇ in Gujarat, Māgh Bihu in Assam, Lohri the evening before in Punjab. They are all the Makara ingress. The Tamil calendar fixes its months to saṅkrāntis directly, which is why Thai begins on this day and why the Tamil calendar and the North Indian lunar one so often disagree about which month it is.
What this page does not say
It does not say that a bath at the puṇya-kāla earns anything, and it does not say that a saṅkrānti at night is inauspicious. The texts fix a window and give a rule for the night case; both are computed here and shown. The kite, the til, the khichṛī are custom, and welcome, and not in the sources named above.
Source — Dharmasindhu and Nirnayasindhu on sankranti punya-kala, including the rule for a night-time sankranti; the sidereal (nirayana) zodiac with the Lahiri ayanamsa, as this site uses throughout; the instant of ingress computed by this site's engine from the Swiss Ephemeris
Every claim on this site names its source, and every calculator shows its arithmetic.