Magha Purnima

Magha Purnima brings the month-long Magha bathing and devotional season toward its culmination. Hindu pilgrimage traditions give special importance to bathing at sacred rivers during Magha, especially at Prayagraj’s Triveni Sangam, where pilgrims may spend the month in prayer, charity and disciplined living known as Kalpavas. On the full-moon day, devotees bathe before or around sunrise, worship Vishnu and other family deities, offer lamps, food and donations, and in some traditions perform Satyanarayan worship. The day does not depend on one single myth; its meaning grows from the older idea that the Magha season is especially suitable for purification through simplicity, sacred bathing and generosity. At large pilgrimage centres it also marks an important bathing date of the Magh Mela or Kumbh cycle and the completion of many Kalpavas vows.

Magha Purnima is valued for devotion, family tradition and the spiritual or seasonal meaning attached to the day.

A bath at a river or a tank before sunrise, and giving away what somebody needs in February - a blanket, sesame, a warm meal. Those keeping the month at Prayag break the kalpavas on it and go home. In Gujarat it is a satyanarayan day in many houses.