Matariki: Looking Up, Together

There's a particular kind stillness that settles over New Zealand in July. Early nights. Cold mornings. The kind of stillness that asks something of you - to slow down, to look up, to remember.

That's Matariki. Not a festival so much as a pause. The Pleiades rise low in the pre-dawn sky, and for a few mornings, the whole country turns its face toward them, to farewell those who've gone, to sit with the people still here, and to set some quiet intention for the year ahead.

I love this time of year. There's something honest about a New Year that arrives in the middle of winter instead of at a countdown party — one that asks you to remember before it asks you to celebrate. Mourn first. Then gather. Then look forward. It feels like the right order to do things in.

Why this is a season for te reo Māori

A number of my cards are written in Te Reo Māori. Not as a design choice, but because the language belongs to this land the same way Matariki does — and Matariki, more than almost any other time of year, feels like the right moment for those words to be spoken and written and sent.

Rā whānau ki a koe — happy birthday to you. Maori Ora — to be alive, well, safe, healed, or healthy.

I don't think you need to be fluent, or Māori, to send a card carrying those words. I think you just need to mean it. Language carries weight when it's given with care, and Matariki is a season built entirely around that kind of care — for whānau, for the people you've lost, for the ones still beside you.

A small thing to do this week

If there's someone on your mind this Matariki — someone you won't see this weekend, someone you're missing, someone you simply haven't told in a while — maybe write to them. Doesn't have to be long. Doesn't have to be perfect te reo. Just something true.

I have a small number of handmade cards in te reo, made here in Auckland, if that's ever useful to you — but honestly, that's not really the point of this post. The point is just: it's Matariki. Look up. Remember someone. Tell someone you love them.

Mānawatia a Matariki

To everyone reading this, wherever you are — I hope you get a clear sky this weekend. I hope you get to sit with people who matter to you, even just for an evening. And I hope the year ahead is a good one. 

Happy new year. Mānawatia a Matariki.

— Del