Talk:A Hearth's Warming Tail/@comment-27073262-20160720170025/@comment-27161581-20160720172545

It's ambiguous, very much like how Scrooge is a fictional character, but possibly was based an a real person of Dickens' time. The events in the story might have happened, but did not definitively did. This is the power of mythos, a powerful tool in storytelling, culture, and history.

To answer your second thought:

One possibility is that it took the three tribe leaders half a year to come together in agreement, rather than bickering among themselves.

Another possibility is that Hearth's Warming is in winter to celebrate being half way through winter, very similar to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. "Always winter, never Christmas" comes to mind. Hearth's Warming is that symbolic Christmas so to speak, indicating the end of the Witch's and the Windigo's eternal winter.