Next Sunday is Easter and we all know what that means — Merrie Monarch! While some of us are still wary of the pandemic, we applaud our celebrated hula festival that’s been thoughtfully and carefully returning. But old fogies like me will continue to take safety precautions even as we’re chomping at the bit to return to normalcy.
For anyone new to our island, Easter Sunday kicks off the week-long Merrie Monarch Hula Festival. Named for King Kalakaua, it opens with a ho‘olaule‘a followed by craft fairs, free music and hula all around Hilo, culminating in three nights of competition with the most dazzling performances in the world. Halau come from everywhere, some to compete and others to cheer. The rest of us get tickets to on-site performances if we’re lucky or watch it on television if we can’t stay up past nine. (Guess who?)
It’s an exciting time in Hilo town!
In 1963 with the century-old sugar industry on the wane, Hawaii County Chairwoman Helene Hale (rhymes with bale) was looking for ways to encourage tourism because back then, our kua‘aina was not on visitors’ itinerary. Hale’s team promoted events such as a King Kalakaua beard look-alike contest and barbershop quartet competition but mercifully in 1968, Dot Thompson took over and with George Na‘ope, focused on hula.
The rest is history.
I grew up before then, when Easter was only Easter and preceded by Lent, a gloomy time when we were supposed to give up something we loved … chocolate for my mother, rice for me. Oh sure, we pigged out on malasadas the Tuesday before Lent began, as if one day of orgy could make up for 40 days of denial. It occurred to me to abstain from something I hated, like liver, but my mother, devout Catholic from birth, prayer of beaded rosaries, enforcer of all rules religious would sniff out the lie and march me straight to Saturday confession with Father Kiernan.
Don’t you pity parish priests who have to endure endless lines of school kids with long lists of venial sins?
“Bless me Father for I have sinned. Last week I talked stink, made face and showed tongue. Also, I peeked at Nathan’s math test.” On a really bad week, I added “ and cockaroached my brother’s sour lemon.”
Yawn. But perhaps it gave our pious padres some nap time as they sat in that stuffy confessional on a humid Hilo afternoon while we sinners droned on and on.
Some might wonder how Merrie Monarch got lumped in with Easter since hula was banned by early missionaries, but let’s call it a poke-your-eye vindication. And it makes perfect sense. If we have to spend six weeks sacrificing and chastising ourselves, then what better way to end it by celebrating with glorious dancing!
Easter is also a time for outrageous outfits and splashy hats. Who can forget my fancy bonnet of vanda orchids that Mom created for the school contest? I only placed third so you can imagine the others.
With Merrie Monarch, look for islanders resplendent in Hawaiian attire accented with multiple strands of lei Ni‘ihau and papale lauhala encircled with kalakoa lei humu papa.
For Christians, Easter represents renewal and rebirth, a joyful reprieve after Lent, that somber time of reflection and repentance. In a similar way, we can look at the first 1971 Merrie Monarch Hula Festival as the start of the 1970s Hawaiian Renaissance with jubilant celebration of one of the traditions suppressed during decades when Hawaiian culture and language nearly disappeared.
Let the dancing begin!
Rochelle delaCruz was born in Hilo, graduated from Hilo High School, then left to go to college. After teaching for 30 years in Seattle, Wash., she retired and returned home to Hawaii. She welcomes your comments at rainysideview@gmail.com. Her column is published the first Monday of each month.
