Happy Hoyan

Posted Jan. 01, 2005
By Lee Reinsch
Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers

Oneida custom helps celebrate New Year’s Day
Tribe members visit homes, greet with ‘Hoyan’

It’s the holiday season and along with cheerful greetings of Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy New Year is one you might not have ever heard — Happy Hoyan!

Hoyan is a traditional New Year’s festival celebrated by the Oneida during which tribe members visit each other’s homes where delicious treats are laid out for them to eat and drink. They greet each other with Happy Hoyan or simply, Hoyan.

“On New Year’s Day, my grandfather and neighbors would take the sleigh and horses, and we’d go from one home to another,” said Pearl McLester, an Oneida.

“The houses were few and far between then, and we greeted each other with, ‘Hoyan!’ They’d invite us in for something hot to drink and doughnuts. Homemade doughnuts.”

There was always something hot waiting for visitors. For children, “something hot” meant cocoa, and for adults, tea.

“People had more tea back then than they had coffee years ago,” McLester said. “Today, people go for a sleigh ride or a hayride, and they take bobsleds that are full of hay, so they stay warm.”

This holiday season, McLester and her family will hold their own Hoyan celebration at the parish hall, with Indian corn soup, homemade doughnuts and “something hot to drink.”

The family of Oneida member Barbara Skenandore has made and handed out homemade banana doughnuts for more than three generations. “We’ve been doing this since I was very little,” Skenandore said.

“My mom did it and my grandmother before her did it,” Skenandore said.

“We have them ready by 7 a.m. New Year’s Day. It usually goes till around 1 p.m.”

They get the doughnuts ready and wait for people to knock on the door and yell, “Hoyan!” she said.

Skenandore said she believes the word Hoyan means “and again,” or “and another,” as in another year.

Jerry Hill, an Oneida, said Hoyan has always been something not to be missed.

“The kids would get hot chocolate or cookies. It was always a fun thing, as cold as it was, we’d be sure to make the trip down the road,” Hill said. “Of course, there were always a couple people who always had the best cookies — big and thick with frosting, all decorated with Santas or Christmas trees.”

Lee Reinsch writes for the Green Bay Press-Gazette.