The Christmas Gift of Aloha
November 30, 2008 by Kailani
Filed under entertainment, hawaii, hawaii, Life in Hawaii, my family, product reviews
One of our favorite holiday activites is The Christmas Gift of Aloha performance at Ala Moana Center. We look forward to it every year and even listen to the CD in anticipation of opening night.
It runs every evening, except Mondays, at 6pm on Centerstage. You have to get there early to get a good seat and I would recommend you plan to be there at least 30 minutes prior to the start, earlier if you can. What really works for us is bringing a beach towel to save our seats. That way only one person has to stay there while the rest can go shopping.
The Christmas Gift of Aloha is a story about an elf named Merry who finds his way to Santa’s Workshop in the islands. This workshop is overseen by Mele (as in mele kalikimaka). Through various songs and dialog, you’ll follow along in their adventures as Merry learns about Christmas in Hawaii and being thankful for what you have.
The show’s finale is a fun, festive, and colorful holiday celebration capped off with falling snow (okay, soap bubbles) and you’ll find yourself singing “The Bes’ Hawaiian Kine Toys“ all the way home.
And if you’re planning to hang out at the mall for a while, you can purchase tickets for your kids to ride the Candy Cane Train for $7 each. It will take them through the shopping center where they sing songs and wave to passerbys. 
These train rides run all day, however, there is one special ride each night (except Mondays) where your kids can be a part of the Christmas Santa Parade featuring all the performers from the show. These tickets usually sell out months in advance.
And don’t forget to visit Santa while you’re there! Your whole family can walk through a hallway filled with colorful Christmas displays which includes menehunes and toy workshops. At the end, take a photo with Santa and also receive free candy canes and a reindeer hat.
Ala Moana Center at Christmas is one of our favorite stops for holiday fun!
What’s your favorite local holiday event?
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Owner of An Island Life and Family Review Network. Wife, mother, and flight attendant . . . living a blessed life in Hawaii. |
That looks like so much fun. Our favorite holiday place to visit is also a local mall. They set up a huge, and I mean massive, train display around a big fountain. There are little buttons the kids can push to make certain features move and they try to spot all of their favorite characters as there are tiny little set ups based around favorite kids movies.
What a fun tradition! I love the whole idea of this & really want to get my family out there to see it.
As a child I loved going to Salt Lake City’s temple square to see the lights. EVERYthing has a light on it. When it snows it just turns into a magical scene. Now that we live in extreme southern Arizona we enjoy going to our town’s Christmas parade. It’s so much fun to see the children & feel their anticipation.
I’ve never been there! Maybe next year I’ll take the kids! The one thing we always do (not an event) is see the lights–there’s these 3 or 4 cul-de-sacs in a row in Mililani that go all out w/their decorations and we make sure to see that every year!
We live in a very very small town so there so our events are not extravagant but we do have 2 Christmas Tree lightings that I go to each year. One at the firehouse and one at the library. It’s nice to bring the community together especially a small one because everyone knows each other and catching up is fun.
My favorite holiday tradition is our Parker Carriage Parade. http://www.parkeronline.org/town_administrators_office/community_affairs/christmas_carriage_parade.aspx
We walk down to the parade route from our house and find a good spot to watch the parade…hopefully in a sunny spot so we don’t freeze. Then we do some of the events afterward. If we were early risers we could go to the pancake breakfast too, but we’ve done that before and would rather sleep.
When we went to the Ala Moana Center they had a group of dancers there. We didn’t get to stay because their drums scared DD.
This year I am going to see Santa arrive on an outrigger in Waikiki and also the city lights at City Hall in Honolulu. We will ride Firetruck Hawaii, too!
There is a place that puts up a lights display with millions of lights. We go every year and the kids see santa pop out of the chimney and wave. They love it!
Looks like a fun weekend! We braved the Zoolights with our crew of 18 and had a ball.
Hugs,
Holly
Great photos! Looks like the girls had a fabulous time. I love their photo with Santa.
[...] shows, photos with Santa, and candy cane train rides. One of my blog friends, Kailani has a great post on this holiday favorite for the [...]
Looks like a great time for the kids. I can tell from the pictures that your girls had a great time. Maybe I should plan a Hawaiian vacation for the holidays. I’m sure my kids would love it.