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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
 Posted - 11/19/2008 : 1:40:19 PM
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What are differences in the way Christmas is celebrated in Hawai`i? For instance, I just cannot wrap my head around Christmas when the weather is warm and the sky is blue. What about Christmas trees? We would always have a real tree, usually one we (actually Paul) cut at a Christmas tree farm. Does most everyone use artificial trees? What about decorations? I mean, is it just dumb to have snowman decorations or Santa in the sleigh? Do you decorate palm trees like some of the kitchsy catalogs I see, with Santa wearing an aloha shirt?
Are there traditional foods eaten, other than turkey or ham? I mean "ethnic" special holiday treats. Like we have baccala for Christmas eve or people drink eggnog or make wassail. Or we would always have an orange in the toe of our stocking.
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Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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alika207
Ha`aha`a
USA
1260 Posts |
Posted - 11/19/2008 : 2:58:36 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by wcerto
What are differences in the way Christmas is celebrated in Hawai`i? For instance, I just cannot wrap my head around Christmas when the weather is warm and the sky is blue. What about Christmas trees? We would always have a real tree, usually one we (actually Paul) cut at a Christmas tree farm. Does most everyone use artificial trees? What about decorations? I mean, is it just dumb to have snowman decorations or Santa in the sleigh? Do you decorate palm trees like some of the kitchsy catalogs I see, with Santa wearing an aloha shirt?
Are there traditional foods eaten, other than turkey or ham? I mean "ethnic" special holiday treats. Like we have baccala for Christmas eve or people drink eggnog or make wassail. Or we would always have an orange in the toe of our stocking.
Please post the thing you sent me, Alana, the one that says, "You know you're celebrating Christmas in Hawai'i when..." |
He kehau ho'oma'ema'e ke aloha.
'Alika / Polinahe |
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cpatch
Ahonui
USA
2187 Posts |
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 11/19/2008 : 5:07:24 PM
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| Craig - that web site is great. I enjoyed it very much and it sure has good recipes. Mahalo! |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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Auntie Maria
Ha`aha`a
USA
1918 Posts |
Posted - 11/19/2008 : 6:43:00 PM
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Wanda, today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin's food section has an article titled "Put a local-style twist on your stuffing"...with recipes for Portugese Sausage and Apple Stuffing, Taro and Chinese Pork Stuffing, and Water Chestnut Stuffing. Yum!
http://www.starbulletin.com/features/20081119_Put_a_local-style_twist_on_this_years_stuffing.html |
Auntie Maria
===================
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hawaiianmusiclover06
`Olu`olu
USA
562 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 01:08:40 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by hawaiianmusicfan138
quote:
Originally posted by wcerto
What are differences in the way Christmas is celebrated in Hawai`i? For instance, I just cannot wrap my head around Christmas when the weather is warm and the sky is blue. What about Christmas trees? We would always have a real tree, usually one we (actually Paul) cut at a Christmas tree farm. Does most everyone use artificial trees? What about decorations? I mean, is it just dumb to have snowman decorations or Santa in the sleigh? Do you decorate palm trees like some of the kitchsy catalogs I see, with Santa wearing an aloha shirt?
Are there traditional foods eaten, other than turkey or ham? I mean "ethnic" special holiday treats. Like we have baccala for Christmas eve or people drink eggnog or make wassail. Or we would always have an orange in the toe of our stocking.
Please post the thing you sent me, Alana, the one that says, "You know you're celebrating Christmas in Hawai'i when..."
'Alika, I will post it tomorrow... Mahalo for reminding me about it.
Alana :) |
Aloha Kakou, maluhia a me aloha mau loa (Hello everyone, peace and love forever) |
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NANI
Lokahi
USA
292 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 05:52:57 AM
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This will be our first Christmas in Hawaii and to be honest I can not WAIT to spend Christmas day in the sand. 30 days and Counting!
What is Baccala??? We always used to have a Christmas Goose but switched to Salmon ten years ago. Not sure what we will do this year. I am dreaming of a big plate of Opah on the grill. |
"A hui hou kakou, malama pono".
Nancy |
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 06:07:46 AM
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Nancy - baccala is dried, salted cod fish, much beloved by the Italians. Since Christmas eve traditionally was a "no meat" day in the Catholic church, Christmas Eve dinner in Paul's family was a very simple tomato sauce (only sauteed onions, canned tomatoes, one small can tomato paste (put it in AFTER the tomatoes have cooked down for 25 minutes and then turn heat off), fresh chopped parsley, epper. Then dredge the soaked cod (or use fresh fish) in flour which has been seasoned with pepper, paprika and parsley. Fry fish in olive oil and when pau break up some and put into the tomato sauce and save other pieces for eating without going in the sauce. Also, never have parmesan with fish, so they sautee bread crumbs, parsley and paprika in olive oil until toasted and put that on top da fish and pasta instead of grated parmesan or romano. Oh, pasta is traditionally mafalda, which is skinny lasagne looking noodles, curly on the edges. They are only about an inch or so wide, but any kind long pasta can be used.
What are you going to do about decorations and such? After you come home, please make sure you share your experiences with us. (And pics, please). |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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rendesvous1840
Ha`aha`a
USA
1055 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 10:27:37 AM
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Preparing baccala for cooking: Wanda forgot to mention how long to soak the codfish. Since it's dried fish, preserved with a serious amount of salt, it takes a while to rejuvenate it. Ma would start 4 or 5 days before Christmas eve, and change the water at least once a day. The idea is to remove as much salt as possible, and prepare it as if it were fresh. You have to keep it as cold as possible during all this soaking, and in years when the weather was cold enough, the fish was a lot better. In warm years, the flavor was strong. So was the aroma from the soaking tub in the garage or basement.We grew up with it, and all of us looked forward to it. Our various spouses, on the other hand, found it harder to adjust to. And our kids never really cared for it. Wanda learned to likeit, but we use fresh or frozen cod instead of the traditional dried fish. This recipe survives from before refrigeration. My Grandmother and my Mother never quit using dried cod, even after fresh fish became readily available in supermarkets. Tradition is important to all cultures. In many families, part of the traditional Christmas Eve dinner was twelve fish dishes, in honor of the Twelve Apostles. Common ones, besides the baccala, were calamari, octopus, eels, shrimp,and various muscles. Ma never ate shellfish, so she never made the 12 dishes. I imagine most families who did make all 12 made a small amount of each, just enough for a taste for each person. My Grandfather insisted each person had to taste each dish on the table, fish, vegetable, or whatever. It didn't matter if you liked it, you had to eat a bite of it. The one I remember most was fennel. It looks like celery, and tastes like licorice. We never liked that one, and Ma only served it once. I'm not sure she liked it any more than we did, but she wanted us to taste it.
Paul |
"A master banjo player isn't the person who can pick the most notes.It's the person who can touch the most hearts." Patrick Costello |
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 11:04:07 AM
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Paul - your mother said fresh fennel was traditional on Christmas eve.
Tastes like paregoric. |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 3:41:59 PM
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Fennel grows wild on the high road to Hawi on the Big Island, and no doubt in many other places in Hawai'i. I have always loved the taste of fennel, and chew seeds whenever I see it. The feathery leaves are also quite good to nibble. Tastes a lot like licorice.
Most people in Hamakua use a Christmas Island pine for a Christmas tree- although they call it a Norfolk Island pine for whatever reason, that pine is far rarer and doesn't make as good a Christmas tree as the branches droop. The Christmas Island pine doesn't look or smell much like a traditional Christmas tree, but at least it is a pine. Of course many people buy the pine and spruce shipped over in refrigerated containers.
There are better smelling pines planted in Hawai'i also, but I no goine fo say where stay cause den nomoa. Smell good, but look a bit ratty.
Lots of glass blowers on the Big Island that make beautiful ornaments. When my kids were young I really got into Christmas decorations, but my Hawai'i house has few walls and one year we had strong winds that blew the tree over twice, breaking most of the ornaments. After Christmas my lady, for some reason, stored the remaining ornaments in plastic buckets under the house, and a big flood came through and down the river they went. One bucket with the junk decorations eventually came back to me, found miles downstream, but I never really got into decorating the tree after that year. That was pretty much the last Christmas we really celebrated. |
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Bd1
Lokahi
USA
114 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 4:32:10 PM
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| Back in the day when I lived on Oahu,I remember the big Hullabaloo over the first container ship that brought the Trees from the mainland! Big time party............. |
BD1 |
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 4:46:38 PM
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I do not mind fennel seed when seasoning stuff like Italian sausage or zuppe di pesce (fish soup, like cioppino or a bouillabaise), but I do not like fresh fennel stalks, as Paul said. Looks the spitting image of celery and then when you bite it, it tastes like licorice. Cannot reconcile the two in my head, I guess. Also, in Indian cuisine, they often use candy coated fennel seed as a digestive and breath freshener. It reminds me of Good & Plenty. They usually have it on a table or near the cash register when you are leaving instead of the bowl of mints like in many restaurants.
One good low cal/low salt/low fat hint when making spaghetti sauce is to put some fennel seed in the sauce while you are cooking it. It makes it taste like you cooked Italian sausage in the sauce without any additional fat, salt or calories.
One time in W. Va., it was a Christmas when we had no kine of money. But I wanted a Christmas tree so bad, so me and my cousin went out in the cow pasture, around the periphery and scouted out a swell looking Christmas tree. I did not know where my Pawpaw put his tools like an axe or a saw, so I got the biggest butcher knife I could find and wet set out to cut that buggah down. I hacked at it for what seemed like hours and had the worst blisters on my hands. And then we did not have a tree stand for the thing, so we tried nailing two boards in a cross like you see on TV. Da buggah would not stand up no matter what, so my ma ended up setting it in a bucket full of sand from the creek. That year for Christmas I got a 25 cent pair of nylon stockings, the kind you had to wear with a garter belt (it was pre-panty hose). But you know, it is one of the Christmases I remember most fondly. Blisters and all. Last year, we had no tree due to the heart surgery. I had been released from the hospital only shortly before Christmas. Matter of fact I still had my chest staples until the day after Christmas. I could not decorate, was not yet strong enough. And I usually go crazy decorating. But you know what? It still was Christmas without all the whoop-de-do that I usually do, the decrating and shopping and cooking and such. It was not so bad after all. Lucikly, I had done most of my shopping before I got sick, and ordered a lot of stuff on the internet. I even had my Christmas cards made before I got sick, so after I came home, I was able to make a few more and address cards in between naps and pain meds.
Bottoom line - Christmas is a feeling, a mood, a special excitement and it does not have to have outward trappings to be a happy holiday. |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2008 : 6:18:56 PM
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Christmas should be a feeling, but it has degenerated in most families to a nightmare of greed and consumption. The media fueled consumption orgy of present giving sickens me to the point where I can no longer enjoy Christmas.
One year I came into a lot of money after having been dirt poor for many years. We rented a house in the "up top" world and put the kids into nice schools. When Christmas came, perhaps I felt a bit guilty that my children had never gotten all the stuff that they saw their friends getting. So I kept asking everyone what they wanted, hinting that I was willing to get them something really nice for Christmas.
Then I went and bought every single thing that anyone had mentioned, plus anything else I thought they might want. I spent like fifteen thousand dollars, back when that was a lot of money. Couldn't wait for Christmas day.
That was the most miserable Christmas I ever had. Everyone was miserably unhappy. That is when I realized what a terrible thing it is to get everything you think you wanted. Because that is when you discover that things cannot make you happy. All this time you have been telling yourself (encouraged by our culture) that if you only had this or that thing your happiness would be complete- that the emptiness one feels living the consumer lifestyle is due to the fact that we cannot get what we want. But then suddenly everything you ever thought you wanted is lying on the floor in front of you, and you are still not complete. What a terrible thing to do to a child!What misery!
I will never forget that lesson: in spite of what the media tells us, things do not bring happiness, ever. It is, indeed, the thought that counts. Happiness comes from our relationships with other people, nature, and whatever you mean by "God". Happiness is from actions, not things. |
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 11/21/2008 : 05:40:25 AM
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| Amen, Chris, Amen! But I still like to get presents! My favorite thing is to get little stuff to put in the stockings. Cute jewelry for the girls, toiletries, little toys, even still coloring books (they have grown-up coloring books) and Karen akways wants a huge orange in the toe of her stocking. I also get cute Christmas chocolates, maybe a unique ink pen or hair scrunchies, etc. Paul usually gets something for guitar playing, maybe picks or a jew's harp, just little things I can finid. One year I got him a mug that said tune it or die. |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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cpatch
Ahonui
USA
2187 Posts |
Posted - 11/21/2008 : 07:05:00 AM
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| I think one of the most valuable lessons in the world for a child (or an adult, for that matter) is to come to the realization that we can never be satisfied by material things. And as a Christian I couldn't agree more with your assessment of the current state of Christmas, Chris. Maybe they should rename it Cosasmas (or Codiciamas for those of you more fluent in Spanish) and allow for the establishment of a new holiday that goes back to the roots of Christmas to celebrate the gift of Love. |
Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can. |
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