Mele Kalikimaka

 

    With literally just enough lyrics to write out a "love from Hawaii!" postcard Mele Kalikimaka is a hell of an earworm. My go-to recording is performed by Bing Crosby with help from the Andrews Sisters, but in looking for pictures of the quartet all I could think of was the classic Kristen Wiig SNL sketch:

Plus, you know, let's get some representation in this blog, right? The song was written by R. Alex. Anderson in 1949 after a stenographer asked why there's no Hawaiian Christmas Songs (uhhh...). He came up with the lyrics and melody, and then somehow shared it while golfing with Bing Crosby. Well, Bing liked it so much he recorded it and "surprised" Anderson with the recording.

    But is that really how you say "Merry Christmas" in Hawaiian? According to Atlas Obscura, not really? It turns out "mele kalikimaka" is, as best I can wrap my mind around it, a loanphrase (a phrase at least partly assimilated from one language to another) from English to Hawaiian. But the problem is Hawaiian doesn't have a C, R, or S in its alphabet, so these letters are replaced with the closest phonetics equivalents: K, L, E, and another K. So, it's kind of taken on the idea of saying Merry Christmas in a Hawaiian sounding way, but without any established Hawaiian words that actually mean "merry," "happy," or "festival." However, my polyglot husband and I agree that the purpose of language is to communicate ideas; and this Christmas song communicates the idea that, in Hawaii, one spends their Christmas surfing, getting sticky with fresh pineapple, and not shoveling their car out of snow bank.

Suckers.