We should celebrate the rites of Spring

Remind me, why did we get a new public holiday two months ago to mark the annual appearance of the Matariki star cluster? Something to do with the changing of the seasons as I recall, the sun’s path beginning to rise in the sky, time to plant the kumara.

It surprises me that pre-European Ma¯ori chose late June — early July for their new year. The winter solstice might be worth celebrating in the northern hemisphere where people live on continental land masses that quickly absorb the sun’s increasing warmth. Here in the vast Pacific, the weather is largely determined by sea, which takes much longer than land to warm up.

All of two months longer, climatologist Jim Salinger once told me. It is late August, he said, before the ocean around New Zealand begins to get warmer. Polynesian colonisers must have known this. They would have known the ocean as well as they knew the sky.

And when they got this far south they would certainly have noticed the consequential weather. The two months since Matariki this year have been cold, bitter and bleak — the coldest winter I can remember in Auckland. We’ve had heat pumps on all day most days through July and August. It has been freezing.

But last weekend, right on cue, it changed. The days dawned cloudless, the sky was deep blue again, the sunshine had some heat, the air had that crisp, freshness of spring. Monday was just as good. So were the remaining days of August. We should have been celebrating.

We should have had a public holiday last weekend, or this one. It’s September, if it’s raining today, as forecast, it’s spring rain and we need plenty of it to keep farm grass growing and city reservoirs full through what promises to be another long, hot, climate-changed summer.

This would be the natural time for a seasonal celebration. It would also be more useful than a new one just a few weeks after Queen’s Birthday. We don’t need two long weekends in June but, two months on, we could do with one now. It’s another two months until the next one, Labour Day.

At least a late October holiday makes seasonal sense — more now than it used to before the climate changed. Spring’s windy wet weather used to continue through November and December in Auckland. Not in recent years. Summer has been arriving at Halloween.

We’re told the sea is warmer at all times of the year now than it used to be. The previous two winters were the warmest on record and despite my need of heat pumps, this one is officially said to have been a warm one too. A Ruapehu skifield has closed early for lack of snow, so it must be true.

But the cyclical pattern remains. Every year the sea in the southern hemisphere doesn’t reach its lowest temperature until near the end of August and it is then, or just after, that we should have a spring festival.

It is worth marking the end of this winter especially because it should bring the end of the lingering precautions against Covid-19. “We’ve always said that when we came out the other side of winter, we’d have a look at all our settings,” the Prime Minister said in Monday’s postCabinet press conference.

She said they would review the orange “traffic light” in two weeks. That would include the rule to wear face masks in shops and public buildings.

I might soon be able to browse in libraries and bookshops again without fogging up my reading specs.

It would no longer matter that I have forgotten a mask when I pull up at the supermarket, no longer have to rummage in the car for a dusty one. But that inconvenience is nothing compared to what it must be like for those who have to work in them all day.

They deserve a spring release. The virus has had a winter to do its worst and hospitals haven’t fallen over. The damage has mostly been economic and educational as workers and schoolchildren had to stay at home for a week every time they or someone in their house tested positive.

The isolation rule might not come under the traffic lights but surely it will be relaxed too. The pandemic is ending not with a bang but a whimper, which is still worth a celebration.

I don’t care what stars we chose or what other excuse we need for a festival these days. Spring is here. It’s time to take off masks and more, expose the winter pallor, plant the garden, dust off the barbecue, make summer plans. Live again.

I don’t care what stars we chose or what other excuse we need for a festival these days. Spring is here.