Some of you might question what do thoughts about decorating your home and a food column have in common, but for me the two go hand in hand, especially during the Christmas Holidays.
Wreath using only Hawaiian native materials found usually at altitues above 2,000 elevations. To gather the materials you need to get a special permit from the Land & Natural Resouces Dep. Leave early morning and drive up to the area. The permit needs to be displayed on your car shield. Otherwise you might get penalized heavily.
Recently a friend in Florida shared an item that appeared in The Free Lance-Star newspaper of Fredericksburg, Virginia, about herbs and greenery traditionally used for the Holidays. Mac Saphir, an Extension agent with the State of Virginia Cooperative Extension Service who wrote the article says,
"Holly, spruce, fir and mistletoe have long been the traditional plants of the holidays".
He goes on to identify several other plants that have been long associated with the holidays. Of all the plants he mentioned, only two can be found growing in our islands.
(photo of Red Heliconia)
The article started me thinking about how we all adapt and use what is available around us for decorating our homes.
In Hawaii, we do grow some pines and certain types of cedars and at certain elevations even holly will grow, but of course, due to availability, most of these are not as popular here as they are in the mainland and most of our Christmas trees are imported.
For many years a friend has been very generous letting us top Portuguese cedars in her property. If the tops are skimpy, we wire a few trunks together to round out the tree. Since we first came to live in Hawaii it has been our own tradition to decorate the tree with little clear lights, fresh red anthuriums and top it off with
sprays of golden popcorn orchids. All my mainland friends think it very exotic but some ask if we don't miss the pines, holly and
mistletoe, which they use for the holiday.
(photo- Red Torch Ginger)
Last year I used long branches of rosemary from our own herb garden to make a large and very fragrant wreath for our hostess on Christmas Day. Boughs of aromatic silver dollar eucalyptus, that are grown right here on the Hamakua Coast, branches of Norfolk Island pines and even ironwood trees, also known as Australian pines, with their cute tiny pinecones are appropriate, long lasting and fragrant when brought into the house.
Other long lasting blooms, which can be used in holiday arrangements, are the red torch gingers, birds of paradise and golden heliconias.
Magnolia leaves and pods can be found in some yards in our area and I also like to use the `bud ends' of Loquat branches. Even the dried seedpods of the woodrose can be intertwined into wreaths, garlands and other decorations.
If you are a malihini (newcomer) who is still not used to celebrating Christmas in an island setting, and thinks you need snow for the Holidays, look around you… you will be pleasantly surprised at how beautiful a tropical Hawaiian Christmas can be.
(c) Sonia Martinez - Come Join the Feast! first published on December 9, 2003 - The Hawaii Tribune-Herald of Hilo
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Comments: 15
I love using our native and "introduced" plants for decorating..... I can just imagine a saguaro decked in lights LOL!!! Some of them can be pretty tall!
;-))) Thank you, Lynn, .....................if I waited for snow to get 'crackin' around here I'd be in a bind - though we do get snow up on the two highest mountains of our island a few times a year!!!!
P.S I like snow at Christmas time...than it can just go on away!..lol
Personally I still love Christmas here in Michigan. I love snow on Christmas. Freshly fallen snow in the morning is a beautiful sight. You can have a warm fire in the fireplace and have hot chocolate or coffee and watch the kids open presents.
However, I also miss seeing Santa arrive in a canoe. LOL
Other countries with a long local Christms tradition (as opposed to an imprted one) my have other ways of decorating and celebrating. For example, when I lived in Spain, I did not see families decorate with evergreen wreaths and trees. However, every family had a manger scene, most either carved from wood or made of pottery, both in deeply rooted Spanish heritage.
I found I did not miss the holly and mistletoe during the years I lived there. I rejoiced in the beautiful manger scenes and the Three Kings displays. Instead of my beloved fruitcake, I ate roscon de reyes and marzipan fishes and enjoyed the traditions there.
Donna refers to lighting up a saguaro. If that is what works in a locale, it's a good thing. Lighting up evergreen trees is another tradition that developed in a very different climate, based on local needs and materials.
A few years ago one of my Brazilian students was here during the very dark week before Christmas, when we need the street lights by 4 PM. It stunned him--as it does all my Brazilian studnts who enounter either winter darkness or summer light even in Philadelphia. The Equator crosses through Brazil, and they do not know the changing lengths of days that we know; theirs are all evenly divided into 12 hour light and dark halves. This student looked at the lights decorating streets and family home doors and windows. He shivered in cold air unknown even in the most temperate region of Brazil. He remarked that with the very early darkness we experience, he finally understood why we make so much use of lights for Christmas decorations--in contrast with Brazil, where they are not so popular, where Christmas falls at midsummer.
I had been chatting online with an Australian friend who talked about Christmas menus. Some Auies try to do the traditional menus wth the heavy roasts traditional in UK and US, but it's really too much for their midsummer Christmas. Her family does a barbie on the beach, far more suited to the climate.
Since you grew up in Cuba, you may have had your sense of the traditional formed on that tropical island whose rditions may have had more Spanish than UK/German roots. Hawaii may not seem as far-fetched to you as it might seem to aperson who immigrated there from New England or the Middle Atlantic region of the US.
At any rate, you have embraced the things that are natural to Hawaii.
I love seeing how you rejoice in where you are!
Marsha, you know our Santa wears red and white aloha shirts and shorts, slipahs (for those who don't know, flip-flops are called slippers in Hawaii, but most people say slipahs) and he comes in a red outrigger canoe!!!! Those reinders go on holiday when Santa comes to Hawaii!
When I was in the mainland last February, it snowed in the area of NC where I was visiting family.....beautiful.....and then all melted by the next day. It did twice in the 3 weeks I was there.perfect!
Dorine, you're right, of course.....although in Cuba we sort of adopted some of the American customs, I guess since travel was so easy at the time between the two countries and people came and went often............and added them to our Spanish customs........of Noche Buena and celebrating Three Kings Day......Christmas in Cuba did not end after Dec 25th.......we did have a much longer holiday until January 6. Christmas there was also more religious oriented than the Santa tradition we observe here.
I will be doing a little series on celebrating Christmas is Cuba as I was growing up
Thank you. I do love where I live very much and would not swap places willingly with anyone......!
Talking about the tree reminded me of the Song that the musician Ray Boltz
wrote :
The ornaments are ready
The Place has been prepared
Strings of lights and holly
Are draped across the chair
The family is altogether
I know where they must be
Everyone is searching
For the Perfect Tree
The perfect tree
Grew very long ago
And it was not decked with silver
Or with ornaments of gold
But hanging from the branches
Was a gift for you and me
Jesus laid his life down
On the pefect tree
Mother wants a straight one
The children want it tall
Dad just hopes that somehow
He can get it down the hall
Soon they'll gather round it
As proud as they can be
But when they are looking at it
I wonder if they'll see
The perfect tree
Grew very long ago
And it was not decked with silver
Or with ornaments of gold
But hanging from the branches
Was a gift for you and me
Jesus laid his life down
On the perfect tree
With all the celebrations
Sometimes the truth is lost
That every step that baby took
Brought him closer to the cross
The perfect tree
Grew very long ago
And it was not decked with silver
Or with ornaments of gold
But hanging from the branches
Was a gift for you and me
Jesus laid his life down
On the perfect tree
I have never heard the song about the perfect tree. I will try to google it now to see if I can find the music. Thanks you!