A Cold Moon Christmas and Midwinter Celebration in North America: Iroquois and Kwakiutl Compared

I saw the serene Full Moon on the night of December 8, 2011 and was reminded of thanksgiving moon festivals among our Native Americans and First Nations throughout the Western Hemisphere. This also includes Mexican/Central/and South America Native Americans and associated groups. Tradition mandates thanksgiving every month of the year among these interesting peoples.

Early white settlers often felt that native monthly festivals were tied to moon worshiping or what they felt was paganism and against the white religions brought from the Old World, but moon festivals do not seem to be worship ceremonies, other than to the Great Spirit for blessing His peoples with food and other necessities. Such narrow interpretations by whites led to Pacific Northwest potlatches' illegal status for a number of decades, finally lifted in the mid-20th Century.

Reading through descriptions and opinions of moon festivals, I found mention of Cold Moon and Midwinter Festivals among both Eastern Woodlands natives and the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest. The two celebrations are quite different, however.The few articles relating the two do not discuss the differences.

Both populations also have traditional longhouses, but constructed of different materials and the Northwest big houses/plank houses are often painted with power animals and accompanied inside and out by carved cedar poles.However, some longhouses n the Pacific Northwest are also bark-covered, but taller than those in the Eastern Woodlands.

In university research archives, the Iroquois and Kwakiutl Midwinter Festivals seem often to occur in two different months, January and February, respectively. Among Mohawk, other Iroquois and other Eastern Woodlands groups, the Cold Moon Festival happens immediately after the new moon in December. For instance, the 2011 date is December 10, 2011 at 9:36pm EST. This moon is also known as the Moon Before Yule, since the time that Native America as a whole accepted Christmas.

Choosing Mohawk Nation, the easternmost of the Six Nations, to represent the confederacy, we see that the traditional longhouse as the center of Cold Moon Festival and January or February Midwinter Ceremonies. This is interesting, because the Kwakiutl big house is their center of celebration at the potlatch. Both groups live in climates that can be very cold in winter, necessitating some sort of wooden structure rather than tents as used on the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies. The similarity may be coincidence caused by climate. However, Haida descendant Dr. John Medicine Horse Kelly indicates that the Haudenosaunee (Mohawk) are the People of the Longhouse (bark covered) and that that Kwakiutl, Haida and most other Pacific Northwest Coastal peoples historically lived in cedar longhouses - we hear them called "big houses" (reference: Dance Canada).

Dream Guessing is my favorite part of Midwinter Celebration among the Mohawk and is described at the source in the embedded link. Several other activities occur for celebrants as well.

It looks to me that most of the initial Native American moon names were crafted by the Eastern Woodlands groups and adopted by settlers and The Old Farmers Almanac. At least these were the most widespread because of the almanac.

Other groups chose their own names for 12 or 13 moons annually, from the East all the way to the West Coast in what became USA and Canada. The Pacific Northwest groups seem to have a multitude of names for their full moons and the Kwakwaka'wakw or Kwakiutl are said to celebrate their two seasons of the year more than they commemorate moons or months. However, I found a single reference to one specifically Kwakiutl full moon - The Moon When Salmon Returns to Earth, in early autumn, which I put in October.

Tribe and Nation websites, journal articles, dissertations, published lectures, and books about Native Americans and First Nations holidays include interesting information and stories. I was struck by a paragraph in one article that described the Midwinter Celebration as being observed regularly by both the group of six nations in the Iroquois Confederacy and the Kwakiutl people. The fact that groups at opposite ends of the continent hold a Midwinter Celebration may be the only similarity in the festivities, but both are fascinating.

In the short article by Christina Delegans-Bunch, the author mentions no other aboriginal North, Central, or South Americans holding Midwinter festivities; and the Iroquois and Kwakiutl ceremonies seem the most widely available in the body of research literature. However, the Hopi in the American Southwest celebrate a bean planting moon festival in January or February. A few other groups also break winter in the middle to celebrate, pray for future harvests and similar, and give to thanks.

For Midwinter ceremonies, researchers write that the Kwakiutl celebrate their connection with their supernatural beginnings through the use of unique dances in tseka performances. Dancers wear strips of cedar bark and wear elaborate masks to represent the power animals that founded their clans. The dances use characters and stories from the people's history and foundation traditions. Kwakiutl Midwinter Celebration includes the beautiful dancing and celebration foods as part of a potlatch for giving gifts (reference: Encyclopedia of Native American Religions. 2001, p. 333).

• Chiefly Feasts. American Museum of Natural History. Aldona Jonaitis, Ed. ; with essays by Douglas Cole. University of Washington Press.1991. [This is the book produced that accompanies the art exhibit of the Kwakiutl of Northern Vancouver Island and the mainland at the American Museum of Natural History.]
• Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection. Jessica Prentice, Deborah Madison. Chelsea Green Publishing. 2006.
• Holidays, Symbols and Customs, 4th Edition . Peggy Daniels, Tanya Gulevich and Sue Ellen Thompson, authors. Helene Henderson and Cherie D. Abbey, editors. Omnigraphics Inc. 2008.
• Kwakwaka’wakw Dances and Dancing: Traditional Dances; William Wasden Jr. in Native Dance Canada. Link retrieved 11/15/2011.
• Kwakiutl. Stanley Walens. Chelsea House Publishers. 1991.
• The Ohio State University, Department of Anthropology lectures and dissertations regarding Native North Americans, 1971 - 2012.

Midwinter Festival is observed by many Indigenous North American groups, but in particular by peoples at the opposite ends of North America: The groups around Ontario CA, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and thereabouts; and groups that settled north and west portions of Vancouver Island, the Queen Charlotte Islands, and the adjacent British Columbia mainland, as well as Southeastern Alaska. Eastern celebrations display similarities and the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan communities have similar traditions.