Sunday, December 21, 2008

happy winter solstice

dec 21st, 2008

dec 22nd is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. according to the hindu calendar, this is the makara sankranti (the day the sun reaches the tropic of capricorn, or makara). unfortunately, because of the precession of the earth's axis over 5,000 years (from the beginning of the kali yuga in 3102 BCE), the hindu calendar is off by a couple of weeks, which is why we celebrate makara sankranti/pongal/makara vilakku around january 14th.

let me wish all of you a happy makara sankranti in advance.

of course, it is the winter solstice and the ancient worship of the indo-european god mitra that the christists swiped and by repeated assertion have got everyone to believe it is the alleged birthday of the non-existent jesus christ.

i got some interesting information on mitra pooja which i will post shortly.

2 comments:

ramesh said...

i was reading in the ny times that the current pope (panzer) made a statement that it was actually the other way round. The pagans swiped dec. 25 clebrations from the christians to counter the spread of christianity.
You have to give it to the christians -- biggest bunch of shameless liars ever in the history of mankind.

. . said...

Interesting, I was telling my 8 year old daughter about solstice, and told that Makar Sankranti starts then and started wondering how the two diverged.

Are you sure that 22nd December is indeed the winter solstice today.

My guess is that it has been moving towards January.

Consider Makar Sankranti now moving to 15th January from last year.