Matariki: We're overdue a midwinter festival. Photo / File
Matariki: We're overdue a midwinter festival. Photo / File
COMMENT: This time next year, we'll be looking forward to a long weekend marking midwinter and Matariki.
The first public holiday in 49 years has already inspired cities and cultural centres around New Zealand to re-embrace old traditions around te ao Māori, and invent a few new ones along the way.
Held at the meeting of the midwinter solstice, the end of harvest and the appearance of the Matariki constellation, it has been observed since, quite literally the dawn of time.
New Traditions: Dunedin's Midwinter Carnival. Photo / Dunedin NZ
From Whāngārei to Rakiura the beginning of the calendar is being marked the way it always has, with shared kai and stargazing ata pō.
However we can't afford to take a day off for granted.
Not many Kiwis know we've been given several public holidays which never caught on.
On the 26th September 1907 the New Zealand marked the first - and last - Dominion Day.
Faded: Parliament decorated by Advance New Zealand's Dominion Day illuminations 1907. Photo / CC, Miss T Watts, Alexander Turnbull Library
Granted to mark a step towards independence from Britain and curry support - New Zealanders were given the day off.
In Wellington the inaugural Dominion Day was marked with a parade, and a procession of bunting albeit 'rather a meagre one' according to local paper the Evening Post. The following year there wasn't even a parade.
By 1912 it was all but forgotten, as Bill Massey's Reform Party swept the largely forgotten holiday under the rug.
So what went wrong? It's not like people resent holidays.
Some blamed unpredictable spring weather, others - mostly business owners and post - felt that New Zealand had enough holidays already.
It failed mostly because it meant little to your average New Zealander, who saw no real difference between living under a 'Colony' or a 'Dominion'. Few people anywhere could explain the difference today.
The Tirama Mai light show in Christchurch kicks off on Friday, 25 June. Photo / George Heard
Perhaps the most obvious Colonial hangover was Empire Day. Cooked up to mark Queen Victoria's birthday on the 24 May, it was marked by a day off for banks, civil servants and postal workers. By the 1930s Empire Day had become another extinct holiday.
Even, my desk calendar doesn't mark it, although 'Donut Day' and 'Yoga Day' appear written large. Neither are in contention of becoming a public holiday any time soon.
You can't just engineer a new holiday and expect people to show up. Without attachment to an event or a cause - and the memories and shared traditions that come with it - it is had to cement a date in memory.
Matariki markers wait for the sunrise at the Hakikino Conservation Reserve in Waimarama, New Zealand. Photo / File
Before last year, there were several failed petitions to recognise the festival with a holiday for the whole nation, though few got off the ground. In 2009 Māori Party MP Rahui Katene's proposal for a Matariki Holiday never made it past a first reading in parliament.
However the desire to mark Matariki officially never faded.
