Ponggal Festival

Ponggal (or Pongal) is the harvest festival of Tamil Nadu. Penangites celebrate Ponggal as a thanksgiving occasion.

One of Ponggal cooking ceremony is to boil rice till it overflows. It symbolizing overflowing wealth and harvest. And the cooking of the sweetened milk rice in new clay pots, which was later topped with brown sugar, cashew nuts and raisins.

The festival will be celebrated over four days.
1st Day: Bhogi – throw away and burn old clothes and unwanted things to signify the end of an old era and the start of a new one.

2nd Day (14th Jan): Ponggal day – thanks Mother Earth and the Sun God (Surya bhagavan) for their bounty

3rd Day: Mattu ponggal (cow worship) – to offer thanks to the cattle, which plough the land and provide milk for the family.

4th Day: kanni ponggal – for the young maidens to seek good husbands.

It is believed that the festival has been in practice for some 5,000 years