{"id":6533,"date":"2008-01-13T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/13\/tamils-all-over-india-prepare-to-celebrate-pongal\/"},"modified":"2008-01-13T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-13T12:00:00","slug":"tamils-all-over-india-prepare-to-celebrate-pongal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/13\/tamils-all-over-india-prepare-to-celebrate-pongal\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamils All Over India Prepare to Celebrate Pongal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.dnaindia.com\/report.asp?newsid=1144839\">www.dnaindia.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">NEW DELHI, INDIA, January 13, 2008: New Delhi&#8217;s community of seven hundred thousand Tamils are gearing up to celebrate the harvest festival of Pongal with literary programs, mass prayers and music concerts. The week-long celebrations will also include preparing ethnic delicacies and drawing the &#8220;kolam&#8221; in the house.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thai Pongal&#8221;, as it is popularly called in Tamil Nadu, is a thanksgiving ceremony celebrated by Tamil farmers to thank the spirits of nature, the sun and farm animals for their assistance in providing a successful harvest all through the year. The festival is spread over four days, from the last day of &#8220;Margazhi&#8221; to the third day of following month &#8220;Thai.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We still celebrate the festival by cooking the Pongal in an earthen pot with water on the hearth, draw &#8220;kolam&#8221; in the house and offer sugarcane to the Sun God,&#8221; Priya, a housewife, said. Pongal Prasadam is a mix of rice, jaggery and milk.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We may have settled here, but we haven&#8221;t forgotten our traditions. Almost all Tamils in Delhi celebrate Pongal the same way it is celebrated in Tamil Nadu,&#8221; Natesan, secretary of Tamil Youth Cultural Association, boasted.<\/p>\n<p>Even though Pongal is a traditional Hindu celebration, the local Catholic Church wants to attract Tamils on this day. &#8220;Pongal is a festival of Tamils and every Tamil should celebrate it. We usually conduct special masses on this day,&#8221; said a Catholic priest. Some churches in Delhi announced they are preparing to serve Pongal Prasadam.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.dnaindia.com NEW DELHI, INDIA, January 13, 2008: New Delhi&#8217;s community of seven hundred thousand Tamils are gearing up to celebrate,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}