Every family has its own set of holiday traditions, often passed down generation after generation. They make the holiday memorable; without them, things just wouldn’t feel right.
Diwali, known as the Festival of Lights, is a holiday that originated in India and centers around the celebration of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. It is celebrated over five days every fall with a host of deep, meaningful and fun traditions. The dates vary each year, from mid-October to mid-November depending on the Hindu lunar calendar.
Families often celebrate by turning on all of their lights and placing Indian diya lamps all over their houses.
“Diwali is kind of like having a Christmas, New Year's and Thanksgiving in one,” explains Dr. Sarah Edwards, who began celebrating Diwali after marrying her husband, fellow physician Dr. Gaurav Bharti.
Diwali takes place on Nov. 5-10 this year, and three Charlotte families share their most treasured traditions as well as what makes the holiday uniquely special in their homes.
THE PATEL-JANARDHANAM FAMILY
Dr. Arpita Patel, owner of Blooming Smiles Pediatric Dentistry in South End, and her husband, Dr. Ram Janardhanam, an anesthesiologist, are intentional about which traditions they introduce to their Diwali celebrations with their children, Ishani, 5, and Raj, 4.
For Patel, traditions are only meaningful if you commit to doing them every year. One of her family’s favorite Diwali traditions is creating rangoli, an Indian folk art using colored sand or powder.
“You make intricate designs on the ground with the sand and it symbolizes that color and light and goodness is coming into your life,” she explains. “By doing this you're attracting wealth, prosperity, health—all the good things.”
Her children use stencils to create these colorful works of art in front of their house. Patel says her mother-in-law can freestyle beautiful designs.
Another long-standing tradition for the family is a coin-washing and blessing ceremony. Each year, the family washes and dries all of the coins in their collection and adds a few more. Then the family prays to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and abundance.
Patel and her family have been doing this for generations.
“I have coins from when my grandparents were kids,” she says.
Once her children are adults, they’ll get some of the older coins from Patel’s collection, so that the tradition of adding to existing wealth can continue.
THE EDWARDS-BHARTI FAMILY
For Dr. Edwards and Dr. Bharti, who met on their first day of medical school and have been married for 18 years, celebrating Diwali has been a combination of traditions.
The couple has four daughters. Edwards, who grew up in Tennessee, is not Hindu like her husband, Bharti, a board-certified plastic surgeon and cofounder of H/K/B Cosmetic Surgery in SouthPark.
“We made a decision a long time ago that we could either make our differences in religion a huge thing or we could just pick and choose what we wanted to do and celebrate everything,” Edwards says.
During Diwali, it's common to give friends and family tins of Indian sweets as gifts. Her family owns a candy store in Gatlinburg, Tenn. so one of the twists they put on the tradition is to give American candy.
Wearing new clothes for the holiday symbolizes new beginnings and prosperity, so it’s also been a fun tradition in their house to buy a new outfit each year.
But celebrating Diwali is also about giving back to the community.
“When we celebrate as a family, we usually pick a charity like a lot of people do at Christmas to make a donation to put light out into the world,” she says. “And we sit around the table and talk about what each of us are going to do to bring light into the world in the coming year.”
“Sometimes my daughters come up with really beautiful things and it's really moving, and other times they say something totally ridiculous,” she laughs.
THE PANDORIA FAMILY
For David Pandoria, owner of new Indian restaurant Zamindar’s Clubhouse in South End, sweets are a big part of the holiday. It’s a tradition to bring a big box of them to family and friends when you visit. Some of Pandoria’s earliest memories involve eating ghughra, a crescent-shaped pastry filled with things like cashews and saffron.
“It's an old tradition that comes down from generations and generations,” he explains. “Ghughra is something that’s only made during the Diwali festivals, and even to this day, my mom makes it just for me.”
It’s a labor-intensive pastry fried in ghee to give it a flaky, crispy crust, which is why it’s often only served during Diwali.
Pandoria says his grandmother, who is 94, still teases him about when he was a little boy and would stuff ghughra into his pockets for later.
“I would come into the kitchen, and I would put two in one pocket, put two in another pocket and have two in my hands,” he laughs. “She talks about it all the time.”
Pandoria is originally from Gujarat in Western India. Each day of Diwali has a special meaning and rituals associated with it, all of which involve eating great food and time with family.
Pandoria opened Zamindar’s Clubhouse three years after being diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma. The former sales executive decided to pursue a long-time dream of opening a restaurant. While he can’t eat much of the food there because of his diagnosis, it still plays a big part in his family’s annual Diwali celebrations.
Zamindar’s will celebrate Diwali with a special ticketed event featuring all of the traditional Indian sweets made in-house.