Mele Kalikimaka: Christmas in Hawai’i
In 1820, King Kamehameha II announced to his Hawai’ian people the end of the system of taboos, or kapu, the end of the traditional gods, and thus the end of the highly structured, ritualized society of old Hawai’i. Not long thereafter, the first American missionaries, of a strict Calvinist tradition, arrived, presumably finding fertile ground … READ MORE…