Essentially a spring festival, there are several accounts of how Holi came to be celebrated. By one account demoness Hoda was killed by children by inducing her on a heap which was then lighted thereby circumventing her boon of immortality. Another version treats it as a day when child Krishna had sucked the demoness Putna to death. In yet another version which is popular in Gujarat, Prahlad, the son of the demon king Hiranyakashyap had emerged unhurt from the heap of fire in which he was made to sit in the lap of Holika, who got burnt instead. Thus on a full moon day of Phalgun Sud 15 Holi is celebrated to commemorate the event of one's belief. It is done by lighting the bonfire of wood and cowdung which is erected in a conical shape over a small pit whic is dug in the bottom. Such fires are lit on almost all important cross-sections of road or in the chawk of the villages. Elders predict about the coming monsoon on the basis of the direction in which the flag planted atop falls. Devotees offer coconut into the fire and the youth retrieves them from the fire amidst applause of bystanders. It is also the principal religious festival of Adivasis in Gujarat. They abandon work and indulge in ceaseless folk dancing. Their girls observe this festival by growing wheat in the bamboo baskets filled with earth and manure. In some tribes the people indulge in foulest of abuse and mock fights.

The day next to Holi is Dhuleti or Dhuli Padvo. Literally it means throwing of mud, the practice which has given way to throwing of vermilion. At times the merrymaking lapses into unhindered revelry as youngsters indulge into throwing paste colours, not only on their friends but also on the strangers taking advantage of the permissiveness granted on the occasion. As noted earlier Adivasis truely celebrate this festival. In the villages of Panchmahals, Adivasi men and women play a martial game known as Gol-Gadheda in which the women after snatching shoulder scarf from a man, ties it on a treetop with a lump of molasses. It is the job of a man to retrieve it from there, not an easy task as women vigorously guards the tree. The game goes on till one of the men succeeds in securing the bundle. Such is the boundless merrymaking of the day.