ਲੋਹੜੀਲੋਹੜੀ

Lohri is the Punjabi midwinter festival of the bonfire, celebrated every year on 13 January, the night before Maghi, across Punjab and the wider Punjabi world. As the sun sets on one of the coldest evenings of the year, villages and city neighbourhoods light a shared fire, and around it a whole farming year is thanked, sung about and danced closed: the winter sowing is done, the sugarcane is coming in, and from this night the days begin, slowly, to grow longer than the nights.

What is Lohri?

Lohri is a folk and harvest festival of the Punjab region, observed by Sikhs, Hindus and families of every background in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Delhi, and wherever Punjabis have settled around the world. It falls on the last day of the month of ਪੋਹ in the Punjabi calendar, on the eve of Makar Sankranti, the sun's entry into Capricorn, which much of India marks the next morning as the turn toward longer days. In Punjab, India, Lohri is an official holiday. Its oldest meaning is seasonal: the passing of the winter solstice, the end of the coldest stretch of winter, and a welcome to the returning sun.

Why is a bonfire lit on Lohri?

The bonfire is the heart of Lohri, and it is a community fire, not a private one. In the days before the festival, children and young people go from house to house collecting wood, dung cakes and fuel, singing as they go; householders who give generously are blessed in song, and turning the singers away empty handed is counted unlucky. At sunset the pile is lit in a village square, a street or a courtyard, and the whole neighbourhood gathers around it.

People walk around the fire in parikrama and throw offerings into the flames: til (sesame seeds), gur (jaggery), rewri, gajak, peanuts and popcorn, eaten through the evening as they are offered. For many the fire is a prayer of thanks to the sun and to Agni, the fire god, for warmth, light and the harvest; for everyone it is the year's warmest gathering, a circle of heat and company in the middle of the cold. In the Sindhi community the same night is kept as Lal Loi, Lohri's other name in Punjab as well.

The harvest behind the festival

Lohri belongs to the rabi, the winter crop season. By mid January the winter sowing is finished, the sugarcane harvest is under way, and mustard, radish and the season's nuts and greens are on the table; the wheat that will be cut at ਵੈਸਾਖੀ is standing in the fields. The festival's foods are the harvest itself: jaggery and gajak from the new sugarcane, sesame, groundnuts, roasted corn from the new crop, and at dinner the winter classic of sarson da saag with makki di roti. Farmers have long treated Lohri, and Maghi after it, as a turning point of the farming year: in the 19th century, revenue for the winter crops was collected on Lohri or Maghi.

Who was Dulla Bhatti, and why is he sung about?

Almost every Lohri song names one man: Dulla Bhatti, full name Rai Abdullah Khan Bhatti, a 16th century Punjabi who lived in the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Tradition remembers him as Punjab's Robin Hood, a local chief's son who defied Mughal authority, looted the rich and shared what he took with the poor.

His fame rests on two girls, Sundri and Mundri, who were being taken away to be sold into servitude. Dulla Bhatti rescued them, protected them, and arranged their marriages, giving them sugar as a wedding gift. The song sung around the fire retells it in a call and response that children still learn first: 'Sunder Mundriye ho! Tera kaun vichara ho! Dulla Bhatti wala ho!' Around the bonfire, the harvest festival becomes a lesson in courage and in standing up for the vulnerable.

The first Lohri of a marriage or a birth

Two Lohris in a family's life are celebrated above all others: the first Lohri after a wedding, and the first after the birth of a child. Both are treated as sacred occasions. The new bride or the new baby is seated near the fire in new clothes, relatives and neighbours gather in numbers, and gifts are given, to the newlyweds by the family and to the newborn by family, friends and relatives. In many homes the bride makes the rounds of the fire with the family's blessings, and the evening's singing and dancing, bhangra and giddha to the beat of the dhol, runs longer than in an ordinary year.

When is Lohri celebrated?

Lohri is celebrated on 13 January in most years, fixed by the solar calendar as the night before ਮਾਘੀ and Makar Sankranti; in some years the pair of festivals shifts by a day, as in 2024, when Lohri fell on 14 January. It closes the month of Poh and opens the way to Magh. The next morning, Maghi, belongs to bathing, charity and, at Muktsar, remembrance; Lohri's night belongs to the fire, the songs and the family.