So I was going to write this in character but I think that would be too confusing as I introduce a few new concepts. This is all going to be Kindred Bay lore, so you can adopt it or say we’re a bunch of lush world dreamers. What I’m calling “real history” is really just my modern historians’ tentative understanding of old writings, while “traditional history” is the story that’s been passed down to the kids over the years.
First, my new calendar:
I created the Oortigalactic Calendar to track in-game days and found that with 24-minute days, there are 420 days in an Earth week, which I decided will be a year to make things simple.
After some research into Aztec/Mayan culture, I found they had two calendars (one “spiritual”) that would intersect every 52 years, known as a “calendar round”. 52… perfect.
With this inspiration I have created the Humboric Calendar, a cheap way of using the Gregorian Calendar as a spiritual version of our own. The Humboric Calendar tracks cycles of 52 years + a few corrective months, based around the 2-year period of extreme cold and blizzards at the end. This cycle is called the Humboric Round.
The real history:
To our historians’ understanding, when the first colonists arrived and discovered the naturally cold atmospheres on all the planets (ice never melts, etc), they stayed on the colony ship for a period to better assimilate to cold weather. When they landed, they thought all was well. Some years passed before the first [not yet named 2-year blizzard season, let’s call it winter] hit.
They were not ready and could hardly stand the cold. Some citizens died in their dirt houses. They thought the snowball meteorites were causing everything so a hunt party tracked one down and discovered the snow spitters. Their primitive axes and totems had no effect on these thick-skinned snow demons and our people were mowed down mercilessly. Almost all would die of the cold. One who returned said they all “died of embarrassment”. He would die of embarrassment that night.
In the wake of this catastrophe, in the throes of this deadly winter they thought might never end, the remaining villagers quickly built one long house and they all stayed there together, pooling their resources and sharing everything they owned until the season passed. That house stayed up and a special stockpile was created for the next time, if there was to be one. 50 years passed and they were far better prepared, weathering the storms and honoring the lost as one family for the next two years. Over time, they would discover the cycle and the Oortianite spiritualists would develop the Humboric Calendar.
Citizens evolved to become impervious to extreme cold. This winter season is by no means a threat, and once it was discovered that snowballs can defeat snow spitters, snowball meteorites become part of the whole tradition…
Traditional history:
The beginning of our Oortmas tradition starts with the first winter. We tell our children of the cold, leaving out the harrowing parts about people dying. We say the hunting party that went out were “defeated by embarrassment”. With the size our civilization grew to, the tradition of living together has become limited to families and invitees, and they bring massive, unnecessary amounts of food and 
brews, while the youngsters will share and trade their toys.
Hunt groups will go out with snowballs and track down meteorites. Since snowballs affect us about as much as water guns now, it’s all just a fun competition. Young hunters will keep track of their peers’ embarrassing defeats for bragging rights. For centuries, the oortstone within the meteorites was given as gifts and used as decor. Since the discovery of portals, there’s a bit more hoarding involved but at least the gold is still gifted quite generously!
I think that’s all I have for it, for now. Always open to ideas.
