The Makahiki opened with the heliacal rising of the Pleiades, called Makali'i in Hawaiian sky reckoning, and ran for roughly four lunar months, associated throughout with the god Lono, understood in Hawaiian religion as a god of agriculture, fertility, and peace. Martha Warren Beckwith's Hawaiian Mythology (1940) records the mythological and calendrical detail behind the season: for its duration the ordinary kapu, the system of religious restrictions that governed much of chiefly and priestly life the rest of the year, were relaxed, war was set aside, and communities turned to tribute collection, feasting, sport and competition.
The season functioned as both a religious observance and a redistributive economic mechanism, with each district rendering tribute that supported chiefly and temple establishments for the year to come.
Beckwith's account also situates the Makahiki within a wider Hawaiian ritual calendar governed by the kahuna priesthood, who tracked the relevant celestial signs and directed the timing of each phase of the season; the transition into and out of Makahiki was itself marked by specific temple rites at the luakini heiau, the class of temple otherwise associated with the war god Ku in the pre-contact period, underscoring how completely the season inverted the ordinary religious order.