Wayne Ryburn: Matariki

Who doesn't like a holiday; having a day off from work to celebrate the new year ? But which is the correct day to celebrate it and is Matariki, referred to as the Maori new year, the one that should be celebrated or Puanga?

Star gazing has occurred since the time of the hunter gatherers who made observations tracking celestial events that marked intervals of human time. The waxing and waning of the moon marked out months of the year while the rising of a star often marked the duration of the year.

Polynesian societies were amongst many primitive and ancient societies from: Babylon, Rome, India, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, the Celts and even the Egyptians who developed a division of time based on the movements of the moon. The year would be demarcated into 10,12 or 13 months, all having various inaccuracies related to the lunar year. Usually with only two seasons Summer and Winter.

 

In Polynesia the year commenced in December with the rising of the Pleiades at sunset. This celebration originated in SE Asia and eventually came to New Zealand's east coast with settlers aboard the Takitimu canoes according to Elsden Best. Best who was New Zealand's foremost Maori anthropologist, researched and wrote his monograph “The Maori Division of Time” in 1922. However these east coasters would switch the celebration to seeing the Pleiades (Matariki) in the early morning horizon prior to the rising sun. The timing could be anywhere in May or June from when the first new moon followed the rise of Pleiades and was also associated with the end of harvesting. Best stated that for the year 1922 with the new moon rising on the 27^th of May this marked the Maori new year for Maori in the Hawkes Bay.

 

Older New Zealanders who watched Peter Read's “The Night Sky” on TVNZ (1963-74) would have been familiar with seeing Read discuss the Pleiades constellation. Commonly called the “Seven Sisters” the constellation could be noted at different times in the night sky when six stars could be easily seen with the naked eye, the seventh more distant and another two in close proximity.

 

However this was not the end of the story as Best narrates; in the far north, the South Island and in the Chatham's, the rising of Rigel, a large blue white star, in the Orion constellation was another important marker for the Maori new year. Rigel is usually highly visible in summer evenings in December and January and is often called 'the saucepan'. For these districts the new year commenced following the first new moon seen after the rising of Puanga (Rigel) in the morning, again either in May or June. The appearance of either the Pleiades or of Rigel as a morning star was a sign of the Maori new year. It began with the first new moon after this event which meant the year varied considerably.

 

Best explained that the differences in celebration lay in the timing of settlers arriving in New Zealand. Those in the far north had adopted the new year from existing people already living there, in other words the Rigel new year was followed by tribes connected to the original people of the land, while the celebration of Matariki was associated with later arrivals on the East coast. Usually Maori tribes acknowledged a 12 month year, each month of 30 days with some variations. The use of the sun as a measurement of time was unknown just as there was no clear system of chronology in early Maori society.

 

The lunar year in archaic Egypt was replaced nearly 4500 years ago at the time of the building of the great pyramids. The introduction of the tropical year, measured by solar solstices, saw 12 months each of 30 days with five extra days added at the start of each year. Thus a 365-day solar calendar became established attuned to the annual agricultural cycle, which had three seasons: Autumn, Winter and Summer.

 

This Egyptian calendar was adopted by Julius Caesar in 46BC. The Romans like all other civilisations had used a lunar calendar, originally of 10 months but later altered to 12. Each month ended and began with a full moon. Usually there were 29 or 30 days per month making it shorter than the solar year. The adopted Egyptian calendar had its unassigned days redistributed so that some months had 30 days others 31 days. A leap year was added as it was calculated that there were 365.25 days in the solar year. The introduction of the Julian Calendar established a leap year every four years with February gaining an extra day. However it later became known that the solar year had 365.24 days which meant an error of 11 minutes had occurred in every leap year.

By the Middle Ages the Julian calendar required a correction as Easter had shifted too far away from the March equinox. Pope Gregory in 1582 introduced changes thus the corrected Gregorian calendar, largely based on the Egyptian solar calendar, with its tweaks, is the only functionally intelligent one that the world still uses today.

 

From 1840 onwards when New Zealand became a British colony with the acquisition of sovereignty and the adoption by Maori of Christianity this Gregorian calendar also became this country's calendar. The regressive trend to celebrate a lunar new year that is both inaccurate and changeable over two months is quite incredulous. Local government agencies should be ashamed of spending rate-payers money on a flawed event while spending nothing or very little on celebrating the actual New Year Day itself, the 1st of January.

Wayne Ryburn, an Auckland University graduate, with a thesis on the history of the Kaipara, has been a social science teacher for nearly 50 years.