Take me to ... the Matariki Festival

Family fun on the Te Ara Rama Matariki Light Trail in Glen Innes for Auckland's annual matariki festival.

For years, many of us have raised an eyebrow at the times of the year when, here in the Southern hemisphere, we celebrate certain festivals. Easter – a fertility and spring festival, with a Christian resurrection story long added to it – as we're heading into autumn and winter? Halloween, which has its roots in harvest festivals, at spring? It's all the wrong way round. Thankfully in the past two decades, we've rediscovered Matariki: Te Tau Hou Māori (the Māori New Year) which starts when the Matariki star cluster (also known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters) rises in the midwinter skies. It's a time of renewal, of getting together with family and friends to acknowledge the year that has been and look forward to the next one. It begins today and runs until Sunday, July 14 with more than 100 community, visual arts, film and digital, environmental and performance events spread throughout the country. Te Ara Rama Matariki Light Trail, pictured here, is one of those. Free to attend, the light festival combines light, music and creativity across nine nights in July in Maybury Reserve, Glen Innes. matarikifestival.org.nz for all events, dates and times.