Hawaiian Christmas

Hot, muggy tropical heat, palm trees waving in every yard, I walk into the bar at the Honolulu airport and there's the native Hawaiian bar tender singing cheerily along to White Christmas.

"You don't really mean that," I said. He laughed.

White Christmas, the Christmas song that seems a Hawaiian muzak favourite, along with Walking in a Winterland. At least I haven't heard a rousing chorus of Frosty the Snowman. Yet.

The Hawaiians love Christmas as well as the rest of us. Lots of light trimmed houses, including the newly popular white hanging icicle lights, red velvet bows everywhere, including the front bumpers of cars. The driver had strung fairy lights round the inside of the taxi limo we road in from the airport. At the car rental on the Big Island, we shared the line up with a Hawaiian woman wearing a straw hat decorated with red and silver tinsel around the crown and a silk poinsettia on the side. The giant marlin on the wall behind the counter sported a Santa hat and a green tinsel garland through its mouth.

As we drove along the highway, we passed huge red bushes growing wild along the road or filling yards.

"Those red flowers look like they are red leaves," said John.

It hit us. Poinsettias. Growing wild. Bushes filled one yard. At our bed and breakfast place, Carson's Volcano Cottage, the owner told us that while not native to Hawaii, the plant grows well along the coast around Kona. This time of year, Christmas being a family time, people will fill the cemeteries with color by placing the plants on relative's graves.

We haven't seen Santa as frequently, only the occasional cardboard picture of the jolly man who must sweat in his woolly fir trimmed suit. At Hilo Hattie's store in Kona, a little figure of a Hawaiian dressed Santa standing on a canoe and backed by a Mrs. Claus in a red sarong, goddesses are very important in Hawaii, stood on a bamboo stand.

The Royal Kona Resort decorated its open air lobby with tropical anthuriums, garlands and a Christmas tree decorated strands of coconut bark. I asked the clerk what the holly-like berries on the tree were called.

"Wedono," he said.

"Ah, wedono," I said.

"Yes, all of us at the desk were just talking about the berries. And none of us know what they are."

The penny dropped,"Oh, you don't know what they are called."

"Yes, we don't know."

I laughed. "This is one of those Abbott and Costello things. I thought you were naming the berries, like the Hawaiian word ono"

At the laua Hawaiian Christmas songs played as we ate, some lilting versions of Christmas carols. No White Christmas. One song talked about family gathered around the Christmas luau. At the end, the women danced in red sarongs with red tinsel leis, a Mele Kallkimaka hula.

For more on Christmas in Hawaii, visit http://www.melekalikimaka.com/customs.htm