Today in New Zealand is the second observance of the new public holiday for Matariki. This is cool for a number of reasons:
1) It celebrates the new year as traditionally observed by Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand
2) The legislation introducing it was bilingual in English and Te Reo Maori. (Although Te Reo is an official language of NZ, along with English and NZ Sign Language, it's not common for legislation to be bilingual)
3) Matariki is tied to a lunar calendar, which makes it a movable feast on the solar/Gregorian calendar. Like Easter it has an astronomical definition (the first rising of Matariki [Pleiades] above the horizon in the last quarter of the moon in the first month of the lunar year) but for convenience there are published tables of dates, which recall medieval computus tables.
#Matariki #NewZealand #Computus #LunarCalendar #Pleiades