Festival pujas (त्योहार)
The rituals families keep for this occasion, and the order they are usually kept in.
3 pujas cover almost every booking for this occasion. Which ones you keep depends on your family's custom.
- Lakshmi Puja लक्ष्मी पूजा — the Diwali-evening puja of Lakshmi and Ganesha
- Ganesh Puja गणेश पूजा — the invocation of Ganesha, kept before any new beginning
- Durga Saptashati Path दुर्गा सप्तशती पाठ — the seven-hundred-verse reading kept through Navratri
What festival asks of a family
Festival bookings are the only ones where the date is fixed for everybody at once, and that single fact governs the occasion. Every household in a city wants the Diwali evening muhurat; every Shaiva household wants the same Mahashivratri night; Ganesh Chaturthi's pranapratishtha and its visarjan are two appointments days apart.
So the constraint is availability rather than price, and it binds earliest in the cities with the fewest verified pandits. A booking made a month ahead of a major festival is choosing a pandit; one made three days ahead is choosing from whoever is left.
The rites themselves are described on each festival's own page, with what the day asks of the household — the fast, the timing, what is prepared. Several of them, Chhath and Pitru Paksha in particular, are kept without a priest at all in many families, and the pages say so rather than implying a booking is required.
