Christmas first arrived on Kauai’s shores in 1786 when British explorers Captain Nathaniel Portlock and Captain George Dixon spread Christmas cheer among the Hawaiians of Waimea, as well as aboard their ships. The sharing of presents, drink and food with
Christmas first arrived on Kauai’s shores in 1786 when British explorers Captain Nathaniel Portlock and Captain George Dixon spread Christmas cheer among the Hawaiians of Waimea, as well as aboard their ships.
The sharing of presents, drink and food with the villagers at Waimea also marked the first documented celebration of Christmas in all Hawai’i. Captain James Cook missed celebrating the Christmas season here during his two voyages to Hawai”i, arriving in January each time.
Dixon’s and Portlock’s ships were the first to visit Hawai’i for commerce. Portlock is today best known in Hawai’i for his namesake Portlock Point, a tony neighborhood on O’ahu’s south shore.
Christmas became an official holiday for Kauai’s people decades later. The first proper Christmas was celebrated in the mid-1800s.
Early New England missionaries who arrived on the island in 1820 and lived at Waimea followed the Calvinist tradition of shunning Christmas celebrating, believing that pagan Scandinavian and even Druid influences were at the root of the festive celebrations held during Christmastime season.
Today, Kauai’s people wholeheartedly celebrate Christmas with a wide variety of traditional festivities, including the singing of Hawaiian Christmas carols. Midnight Mass in the island’s Roman Catholic churches is a highlight of the year for many Portuguese and Filipino communities. And cutting down Norfolk pines, specially grown as Christmas trees, is a Christmas tradition for some Kaua’i families.
Winds blew lustily, whipping the deep blue sea into a heap of foam-crested peaks, as the ships of British explorer Captain Nathaniel Portlock lurched and groaned toward the remote Pacific Island of Atooi, as Kaua’i was then known as, a few days before Christmas 1786.
Fresh from the wonders of Tahiti, the officers and crew may have been daydreaming of new adventures as the towering pinnacles and verdant valleys of Atooi grew closer, yet surely some were homesick for the verdant Britain so far away, longing to spend the holiday season with families or sweethearts they had not seen for many weary months – isles they might not see again for another long stretch of time.
A day or two before Christmas Eve, Portlock and his second-in-command, Capt.
Dixon, anchored their vessels, the King George and the Queen Charlotte, offshore of the village of Waimea. It had been only eight years since the island had been discovered by Portlock’s countryman, James Cook, who later met his end in a dispute with warriors at Kealakekaua Bay on the Big Island.
Portlock and his men had no inkling of what kind of welcome they might receive and could not know they had arrived at a most auspicious time as the three-month makahiki festival was ending. During the makahiki, Hawaiians honored the peaceful god Lono by resting from their labors, engaging in sports and entertainment and feasting sumptuously.
As Portlock and his men rowed toward the beach, they were met by dozens of outrigger canoes filled with friendly Hawaiians who warmly greeted the pale strangers. Once on shore, Portlock let his sailors mingle freely with the people of Waimea and urged them to share their Christmas celebration with the makahiki revelers, thus boosting the crew’s morale during their treacherous, years-long circumnavigation and, at the same time, improving relations with the local Hawaiians.
Dixon’s classic account of his journey with Portlock, entitled “A Voyage Round the World, 1789,” includes a passage describing what was undoubtedly Kauai’s very first Christmas. Reading like a page from a Charles Dickens holiday classic, the entry for Dec. 24,1786, reveals, “This being Christmas, that season of the year so universally convivial throughout the civilized world, we spent our time as agreeably, and with plenty of as good cheer as we could procure, such as roast pig, sea-pie, &c. &c. and to show our refined taste, even in our liquor, we no longer dran [sic] grog mixed with simple water, but offered our Christmas libations in punch, mixed with the juice of coco-nut, toasting our friends and mistresses in bumpers of this liquor, which perhaps pleased more on account of its novelty, than from any other circumstances.” Besides imbibing some of the first tropical cocktails ever concocted in Hawai’i, Portlock and his men also rowed ashore for a Christmas dinner. In Portlock’s journal the event is vividly recalled, and begins on Christmas Eve: “We arrived at the house about sunset, and one of chief Abbenoe’s men, who had joined us in the course of the afternoon, gave directions for a hog and a dog to be immediately killed and dressed for our suppers, together with a large quantity of taro. The house was well lighted up with torches made of dry rushes, and at eight o’clock supper being ready, it was served up in great order, and I think few people ever ate a heartier supper than we did.” Portlock also acted out the role of Santa Claus to the young children of Waimea village. He wrote later, “We got up next morning at daylight, and finished the remains of the preceding evening’s repast. Previous to our quitting the house, there were near an hundred women about it, most of them with children in their arms; they were very inquisitive to know my name, which they pronounced Popote, and such of the infants as could speak were taught by their mothers to call on Popote; on this I distributed some trifles amongst them, with which they appeared highly satisfied and pleased.” On Christmas Day, Portlock’s kindness was repaid sevenfold. Kiana, a chief of Waimea who later sailed with Portlock to China and became the first Hawaiian to intermingle with the Chinese in their homeland, appears in the passage.
Portlock wrote, “In the morning of the 25th, Kiana, the chief whom I saw on shore, came off in a large double canoe, and brought me a present of some hogs and vegetables, which I received, and made him a return that pleased him very much.
“He informed me that the king, accompanied by Abbenoe and a number of other principal chiefs, would be down in a day or two, and in the mean time we should be plentifully supplied with every thing the island produced.
“After many professions of friendship Kiana took his leave and returned on shore. Soon afterwards I sent the whaleboat on shore to Waimea for the sailor I left behind along with Paapaaa and Towanoha; my man returned with the boat, but the other two chose to remain on shore a day or two amongst their new friends, and I understood they were greatly caressed by the natives in general.” Shortly thereafter, the huge north seas and strong trade winds of winter blew Portlock’s ships off the coast of Waimea toward Ni’ihau. The holiday celebration was soon a fading memory as the men returned to the drudgery of setting sails and keeping careful watch for coral reefs.
Although these early explorers were followed to the Sandwich Islands by successive waves of missionaries, traders and adventurers, Christmas was not celebrated popularly until nearly a century later, when the influence of the New England missionaries, who viewed Christmas largely as a pagan holiday with roots in Celtic and Viking practices, began to wane in the mid-1800’s and Christmas was once again observed in Hawai’i with the feasting, merry-making and good cheer that Portlock and his men experienced in Waimea.
The spirit of aloha shown to the weary British sailors by the people of Kaua’i two hundred years ago still thrives on the Garden Island and is not so very different from the message of love that gives Christmas its true meaning.
Used with permission from Mutual Publishing’s ‘A Kaua’i Reader,’ by Chris Cook. Cook can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 222) and ccook@pulitzer.net
