Skip to main content

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!!!

Comments

  1. I'm surprised you had not heard that song. It is played on the radio here every year. Seems to be one of their favorites. GG

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...

Sumida Watercress Farm

This week, we went on a field trip to Sumida Watercress Farm in Aiea. Ben was not happy about going with us. He grumbled the entire way there about me waking him up early to "watch things grow". Sumida Watercress Farm grows 75% of all the watercress produced in Hawaii. It has been run by the Sumida Family for three generations. One of the most interesting things about this farm is that the Pearlridge Mall was built around it because the Sumidas did not want to sell the land. It's very cool to look at this little farm and then see the city buildings all around it. One wall has the tails of marlins they have caught, each of which weighed over 600 pounds! One was even from an 800 pound fish! Mr. Sumida brought out a giant bowl of crawfish which live in the water. He showed the kids how to pick one up and where to hold it so it couldn't pinch them. Katie picked one up and it promptly twisted itself into a backflip and pinched her finger. We got to walk out through ...

Japanese Fishing Shrine

Here's an interesting little spot we stopped to see. I'd passed this many times before and had never stopped to see what it was. Since GG and Sherry were here, we decided to check it out. There is a shrine of some sort with a statue and a carved rock. There was no information on sight as to what it is that I could find. There were flowers, food and incense left around the base of the shrine. There was a ceramic statue and a rock with a figure carved into it. None of the food was old or rotting (although plenty of it had clearly been pecked by birds) and the flowers were all fresh which made me think it must be cleaned and cared for on a regular basis. After we got home, I did some research and found this article about it from the Hawaii Star Bulletin, our local newspaper (I have edited out some bits, but otherwise the article is unchanged): "Maintenance" of the monument has been assumed by a group of Vietnamese Buddhists - Shingon Shu Hawaii, the Buddhist temple th...