While the rest of ye are watching the Leaders Debate, *i* have been researching the traditional calendars and timekeeping traditions of Native Hawaiʻians. And I feel like sharing.
Like other Polynesian, Native American, and tropical African peoples, Hawaiʻians divided the year into two seasons: Hoʻoilo, the wet season (winter), and Kau, the hot season (summer).
Hoʻoilo traditionally begins on the day when the Pleiades rise just after sunset. The beginning of Kau is less clear from my reading, but it looks like it begins on the day when the Pleiades rise just before the sun.
Months begin with the first sighting of the waxing crescent moon. Days traditionally begin at sunset, all the better to see the thin crescent. In this regard, traditional Hawaiʻian timekeeping resembles that of Semitic peoples.
While most cultures just identify the half moons, full moon, first visible crescent, and possibly the dark moon, Hawaiʻians have a name for every single phase: https://archive.hokulea.com/ike/hookele/hawaiian_lunar_month.html
But traditional Hawaiʻian calendars aren't rigorous and standardised like you get with civilisations¹. It's much more freewheeling, and things like the names of the months, the order, and which month begins the year varies from community to community. Some start the year with the first visible crescent after the acronycal rising of the Pleiades, some the month before that, and others four months later, around the northward equinox.
¹Civilisation ≠ good
Indeed, years aren't super important in traditional Hawaiʻian culture; they pay attention to the moon to measure time, and to the stars and the time of sunrise to determine when to plant crops and when to catch which fish, but there is little importance attached to how many years have passed, or the ratio of months to years.
It's overall pretty freewheeling.
I'll finish with a beautiful quote from Leihua Yuen.
"[L]ike the tides of the ocean, the Hawaiian months gently ebb and flow across the Gregorian calendar."
— https://www.kaahelehawaii.com/kaulana-mahina-the-hawaiian-lunar-calendar/
Some other sources:
https://archive.hokulea.com/ike/hookele/hawaiian_star_lines.html
https://archive.hokulea.com/ike/hookele/hawaiian_lunar_month.html
https://guides.library.kapiolani.hawaii.edu/apdl/oahu/months
Appendix: One name by which Native Hawai'ians call themselves is Kānaka Maoli. Those of you with some awareness of East Asian languages might notice that the second word there is quite similar Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. That's not a coïncidence. Hawai'ians and Māori descend from the same ancestral population, and the same word underwent a common mutation as the populations diverged.
And the Māori traditional calendar is quite similar to the Hawaiian.
@Infrapink The r, k, t, l, h, n, g, w letters are interchangeable in Polynesian languages.
For instance, "people", is translated and pronounced similarly:
Hawai'ian - Kānaka
Māori - Tangata
Sāmoan - Tagata ("g" is pronounced "ng")
Māori & Maoli are the same, means "indigenous."
@Infrapink I was literally thinking that as I read the rest of this thread, so familiar just framed slightly differently
Which makes sense considering our common origins
@Infrapink hence the linguistic and cultural similarities.