Facts and Festivals of India by Manish Verma [DP]

The Hindu Festivals, fasts, Rituals, holy baths and the observance of sacred days are part of the great cultural heritage of India. They are Religious and social and a great source of spiritual and moral enrichment. They also lend zest, variety, colour and grandeur to an otherwise insipid, routine and care-worn day to day human existence. The hindu Festivals are more that what they appear to be. they are essentially a way of living and thinking in the course of existence, and as such bring their whole right to bear on the individual  and the  society.

Unlike the Details of the Hindu Pantheon, the festivals are numerous and frequent, but basically religious, psychological and intimately connected with the change of seasons, though many of them have lost the history of their  origin in the mists of the hoary past. with the passage of time they have undergone a process of transformation and evolution and many new festivals have been grafted upon the old ones.