Firstmelt & Bloom-Meet

Firstmelt began out of the necessity of monitoring changes in the season to plan for agriculture, animal husbandry, and the following of migrating herd animals. While it still serves as an indicator for farmers, it has taken on a more celebratory significance. Bloom-Meet, similarly, was used to estimate the time of the planting season and celebrate the coming spring, but it has also recently taken on a growing association with romance.

Firstmelt is celebrated with large bonfires (often incorporating ashes from the effigies that are burnt during new year celebrations), decorating the home with evergreen garland and brightly colored candles, shearing sheep and gathering muskox wool and creating crafts and textiles using these animal fibers (often dyed in bright colors), and the communal planting of a tree at the edge of town.

Bloom-Meet is celebrated with ritualized tea ceremonies, the sprinkling of water over friends and family (meant to evoke watering a flower), the wearing of floral-scented perfumes, gifting sweets and small trinkets to lovers and spending time with them, and planting flowers near the entrance to one's home.

Firstmelt: Colored candles, bright dyes for wool, leftover ashes from new year effigies, evergreen garlands.

Bloom-Meet: Ritual tea sets, often decorated with symbols of spring such as flowers and pollinating insects, small water containers, often made of silver, carried around on one's person and used for sprinkling water on others, floral perfumes.

Firstmelt is celebrated only in areas that are snow covered for the majority of the winter. It takes place in spring the day after the first sizable patch of bare ground (traditionally "the size of a serving platter") is found in a snowy field adjacent to the settlement that is celebrating. Similarly, Bloom-Meet is celebrated in areas that are not snow covered throughout winter, the day after the first spring blooms are spotted near a settlement. The bare ground/blooms are generally reported to local leadership by those who found them, and an announcement is made (usually through a public gathering) that celebrations will begin the following day.