The Makahiki season was the Hawaiian Thanksgiving, in honor of the god Lono. It was a holiday covering four consecutive months (from October or November through February or March). Religious ceremonies happened during this period. The people stopped work, made offerings to the king, and then spent their time practicing sports, feasting, dancing and having a good time. War during those four months was kapu.

The Makahiki festival was broken down into two periods. The first period was the time when the whole country was sacred and the people, although they had stopped working, were not yet allowed to play. Before they could play, the taxes ('auhau) for the king—collected by the Konohiki, or tax collector, and paid in pigs, taro, sweet potatoes, feathers, kapa and mats, since there was no money or medium of exchange—had to be brought together and offered on the altars of Lono. The gifts from the people were divided up by the king and his followers and by the priests. These gifts were called hookupu. Everybody brought gifts which were regarded as taxes but were originally offerings, and laid them on the ahu-puaa, or stone altars set up at the boundary line of every district.

Then an image of Lono (or Akua Loa, a long pole with a strip of tapa and other embellishments attached) was carried around the island by the priests. At each one of the ahu-puaas, the chief of that district presented the gifts to the image, or in other words to the fertility god who caused things to grow and who gave plenty and prosperity to the country. The priests accepted the offering to the god and said a prayer that ended the kapu period.

The second period, usually beginning some time in the month of November, was a time of celebration, of hula dancing, of sports (boxing matches, sliding on sleds, surfing, canoe races, relays, and swimming), of singing and of feasting. At the end of the Makahiki festival, the king would go off shore in a canoe. When he came back in he stepped on shore and a group of men with spears would rush at him. It was believed that unless the king was sacred enough to be superior to death, he no longer was worthy of representing Lono, the god of plenty.

The sails and masts of Captain James Cook's ship resembled Lono's Akua Loa. Captain Cook reached the Hawaiian Islands during the Makahiki season in 1778. Because of this, the Hawaiians at first thought Captain Cook was the god Lono returning to the islands, which was foretold in Hawaiian legends.

In the Hawaiian language, the word Makahiki means "year".

See also

Handy, E. S. C. Ancient Hawaiian Civilization. Honolulu, HI : Mutual Publishing, 1999.