Hawaii has only been part of the United States of America since 1959, and Hawaiian traditions are still deeply embedded into the modern Hawaiian-American culture, including Thanksgiving. Before Hawaii adopted the traditional American Thanksgiving, they had Thanksgiving traditions of their own.Makahiki lasted four months, November through February, and was known as a season of thanksgiving for the harvest. Members from each district would offer fish, pigs, and vegetables at an altar, “which sat on the boundary of each ahupua‘a (land-division). The warlord of each district would pass through, collect the goods, and sponsor a huge feast,” according hawaiimagazine.com.Makahiki was a time when rival tribes were not allowed to fight. The rainy winter weather often prevented the people from working, so they spent their time having surfing competitions, boxing and wrestling matches, and eating, as said in hawaiimagazine.comThen, in 1849, King Kamehameha III declared December 31st a national holiday of Thanksgiving in hopes of strengthening the relations between Hawaii and the United States, Hawaii Magazine reported. This was 14 years before United States President Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday of November to be a national holiday of Thanksgiving.Napualani Watson, a student from Hawaii, said of Thanksgiving, “It’s more of an American thing. It’s not really traditional for us to celebrate it, so we just celebrate it like Americans do.”Other students at BYU-Hawaii are embracing their Hawaiian heritage and are finding ways to incorporate Hawaiian traditions with American traditions during the season of Thanksgiving.“Every day is a day of thanks for any Hawaiian. Thanksgiving is an American holiday,” said Alena Nu’uhiwa Pule, a student from Hawaii.Keli’i Mawae, a junior studying business finance from Hawaii, said, “I come from a fishing family, so most of the time we always had fish alongside our turkey or sometimes no turkey at all. Actually, it was very seldom that we had turkey, mostly all types of seafood instead.”“The bowl of poi that we made would be huge, and we all shared the same bowl to signify the joining and unity of the family,” Mawae added
Writer: Emily Halls ~ Multimedia Journalist
