Dhanteras

Dhanteras, "the thirteenth [day] of wealth", opens the multi-day Diwali festival, falling on the thirteenth day of the dark fortnight of Kartika (October-November). It is above all a day of prosperity and auspicious buying: households clean and decorate, draw rangoli and light the first lamps of the Diwali season, and it is considered especially fortunate to purchase gold, silver or new metal utensils, a custom that makes it one of the busiest shopping days of the Indian year. Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and fortune, and Kubera, the treasurer of the gods, are worshipped for the coming year's prosperity.

The day carries a second, medical dimension. It is also Dhanvantari Trayodashi, the appearance day of Dhanvantari, the physician of the gods who, in the myth of the churning of the ocean, rose from the waters bearing the pot of the nectar of immortality; he is regarded as the divine origin of Ayurveda, and the day is observed by practitioners of Indian medicine as a kind of national Ayurveda day. The two themes, wealth and health, are joined in a further custom of lighting a lamp for Yama, the god of death, set at the threshold to avert untimely death, so that the opening of the festival of lights already gathers prosperity, healing and protection into a single evening.

Beyond gold and silver, Dhanteras has become the single most important day of the year for a wide range of major Indian consumer purchases, with automobile dealerships, electronics retailers and appliance stores all reporting their highest single-day sales volumes of the year concentrated on this date, since the belief that a major purchase made on Dhanteras carries particular auspiciousness has extended well past the traditional emphasis on precious metal to essentially any significant household acquisition a family can time to the date.

Car manufacturers and dealerships in particular now plan production, inventory and staffing specifically around the expected Dhanteras sales surge, and Indian financial media report national vehicle and consumer durable sales figures for the day as a widely followed indicator of household consumer confidence for the upcoming year, a striking instance of a religious belief about the auspicious timing of new acquisition reshaping the operational calendar of entire modern retail and manufacturing industries rather than remaining confined to the household shrine or the jewellery counter.

India's Ministry of AYUSH formally designated Dhanvantari Trayodashi as National Ayurveda Day in 2016, giving the medical dimension of Dhanteras a specific annual government observance of its own, marked with conferences, health camps and public messaging promoting Ayurvedic medicine nationwide, run alongside, and separately from, the retail and jewellery-buying customs that dominate popular observance of the day.