Christmas Caroling in Hawaii

We went Christmas caroling tonight with a local church that we have found. We've been to this church two times now, and this morning they announced that they would be caroling tonight so we decided to join them. I don't know that I've ever been caroling before.

Quite possibly I did, but I don't remember it. I am not a singer and always considered it a form of torture so I may have blocked out the memories.

We sang lots of traditional carols, but we also sang "Mele Kalikimaka" (which is "Merry Christmas" in Hawaiian). It's probably a tradition to sing it here, but it was the first time I had heard it. It was my favorite song of the night!

We had to use flashlights to see the words. Because it was so dark, there were a couple of unfortunate mishaps. One woman fell and skinned her knee pretty badly. And as we were walking into the parking lot of another building, none of us realized there was a giant mechanical arm which blocks cars without a pass from coming through. Apparently a car had recently come through and the arm stayed up long enough for many of us to walk past without noticing it. Then it came down with a mighty "thwack" on the head of one gentleman in our group. He got quite a nasty cut from it.

Katie, always the shy retiring type, got hold of some bells and added some jingle to the procedings.

Afterwards, we went back to the church for dessert and a "Hawaiian snowball fight".


Since the kids of Hawaii don't have snow to throw at each other, the church lets them ball up paper and pelt each other with it every year at Christmas. You've never heard such screaming. My kids enjoyed it immensely. They all made friends tonight and it looks like we've found ourselves a church home!!!