Janmashtami Gifts

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Krishna gifts, and gifts for Janmashtami Two different people arrive at a page like this one. One is buying for Janmashtami, which is close and has a fixed hour. The other is buying for somebody who keeps Krishna all year, for a birthday or a new house or no reason at all, and the festival is simply when they got around to searching. The answers overlap, but they are not the same answer, because a Janmashtami gift has to be right for one night and a gift for a devotee has to be right for a decade. The festival carries almost as many names as the deity. Janmashtami or Krishna Janmashtami across most of the north, also written Janamashtami and Janmashtmi. Gokulashtami in Maharashtra and much of the south. Krishna Jayanti or Sri Jayanti in Tamil households. Ashtami Rohini in Kerala. The person receiving is a Krishna bhakt or a Krishna devotee depending on which language the sentence is in, and the deity is Kanha ji, Kanhaiya, Shri Krishna, Shree Krishna or Sri Krishna in the same conversation. What happens on the night, and why the gifts follow it The fast runs through the day and breaks at midnight, because midnight is the hour of the birth rather than the evening. In households that keep Laddu Gopal, the infant Krishna, the night is his birthday: he is bathed, dressed in fresh clothes, offered bhog and cradled. That is the whole reason these gifts are what they are. What is given is either the murti at the centre of that or something meant to stand near it. The date moves with the lunar calendar, and the two criteria that fix it are weighted differently by different traditions, so it can fall a day apart in two houses on the same street. Check a panchang for the year rather than a shopping page, this one included. In Maharashtra the dahi handi follows the next morning, but that is a street event rather than a household one and nobody shops for it here. The one mistake, and it belongs to this night in particular If the murti you are giving is going to be bathed at mid