3. The fight in spring between winter and summer exemplifies the struggle between the two basic forces in nature. Early man seems to have manipulated the time for this great battle, changed it to an earlier date. A new year will not begin around spring equinox but at winter solstice.

The god of summer has no power at winter solstice. Therefore man can overcome him and become king at that time. This could explain why Lono (Rogo) appears at winter solstice although he is a god of vegetation. He is quickly dispatched of and the man king can regain his power.

Like Maui the man king has made the sun slow down - by a decree to begin counting the days of the year already from winter solstice it will take more days before darkness once again will fall. Sun will be old and feeble and no match for winter.

"... It is more important to notice that power is not represented here as an intrinsic social condition. It is usurpation, in the double sense of a forceful seizure of sovereignity and a sovereign denial of the prevailing moral order. Rather than a normal succession, usurpation itself is the principle of legitimacy. Hocart shows that the coronation rituals of the king or paramount chief celebrate a victory over his predecessor ...

There follows the scene of ritual chaos ... when the world dissolves or is in significant respects inverted, until the new king returns to reinstate the tabus, i.e., the social order. Such mythical exploits and social disruptions are common to the beginnings of dynasties and to successive investitures of divine kings. 

We can summarily interpret the significance something like this: to be able to put the society in order, the king must first reproduce an original disorder. Having committed the monstrous acts against society, proving he is stronger than it, the ruler proceeds to bring system out of chaos. Recapitulating the initial constitution of social life, the accession of the king is thus a recreation of the universe. The king makes his advent as a god. The symbolism of the installation rituals is cosmological ...

The rationalization of power is not at issue so much as the representation of a general scheme of social life: a total 'structure of reproduction', including the complementary and antithetical relations between king and people, god and man, male and female, foreign and native, war and peace, heavens and earth." (Islands of History)

However, the experts added, in that case sun has to leave already at midsummer - he has to move quickly right through the 'back side' to the other pole, were he will be expected to arrive at winter solstice. In myth the strange defeat of Tuna by Maui going right through him could allude to this idea. Changing the year is no simple feat.