Shitala Satam 2026 Date
Shitala Satam 2026 is on Thursday, 3 September 2026, on Sapthami tithi.
Dates are for India (IST). Tithi timings for your city are on the Shitala Satam page.
About Shitala Satam
Shitala Satam is the one day a year a Gujarati kitchen goes cold — the chulha is not lit at all. Falling on Shravana Krishna Saptami, the day before Krishna Janmashtami, the family eats only food cooked the previous day (Randhan Chhath) and offers the same stale food to Shitala Mata.
Shitala Mata is worshipped as a form of Parvati who rides a donkey and carries a broom, a kalasha (pot of cool water) and neem leaves — symbols of cleanliness, coolness and protection from the 'hot' diseases like smallpox, measles and pox-fevers. The Gujarati observance splits across two days. On Randhan Chhath ('cooking sixth') women cook every dish the household will eat the next day. On Satam the stove stays unlit — a rare pause for the kitchen fire at the height of the Shravana monsoon. The goddess is bathed in cool things: water, curd, buttermilk, turmeric. Note the calendar quirk — North Indian Basoda follows Holi in spring, but Gujarat keeps its Shitala day in monsoon, tucked right against Janmashtami eve.
