Mizo–Kuki–Chin Hills · Northeast Hill Massif
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Chapchar Kut | Late February or the first week of March | The spring festival, placed in the pause between felling a jhum plot and burning it — a gap the farming calendar creates and the festival fills. Cheraw, Chai, Khuallam and Sarlamkai are danced publicly, in full puanchei, and Aizawl's ground is the largest staging of Mizo dance in the year. Revived on a public scale from 1962 and again in 1973, after which the churches accepted it in a form stripped of sacrifice. |
| Mim Kut | August or September, at the maize and Job's tears harvest | The festival of the dead. The first fruits of the harvest, along with clothing and ornaments, are set out for relatives who have died in the past year, and a place is kept for each of them at the meal. Its older name translates as the festival of weeping, and the days after the offering were spent at home, without work or argument. |
| Pawl Kut | December or January, after the harvest | The straw festival — a thanksgiving feast of meat and eggs, traditionally including chhawnghnawt, in which mothers and children sit on a built platform and feed each other portions by hand. Two or three days of eating, singing and games, and the least solemn of the three Kuts. |
| Thalfavang Kut | November | A weeding-season festival revived in the modern era and now run largely as a public cultural event, with village troupes performing in sequence. It fills the autumn gap between Mim Kut and Pawl Kut. |
| Chavang Kut | 1 November | The post-harvest Kut of the Manipur hill communities, observed on a fixed date and marked by dance competitions, feasting and community gatherings across the Churachandpur uplands. |
| Christmas and New Year | 25 December to 1 January | In practice the largest community event of the year across the region — village-wide feasts cooked in common pots, all-night lengkhawm singing, and a scale of participation the older Kuts no longer match. |
| Vantawng and district Kut celebrations | Varies by locality | Individual districts and localities stage their own Kut grounds ahead of or alongside the Aizawl event, which is where most village troupes actually perform and where the dancing is least rehearsed. |
The festival calendar of Mizo–Kuki–Chin Hills — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (7)