Santa's birthday, right? I remember one year, decades ago when I was about 13, we went to Hawaii to celebrate Christmas with our Japanese relatives. It felt so odd to be celebrating Christmas in the tropics. I remember learning to sing, "Melekelikemaka is the thing to say saying Merry Christmas the Hawaiian way" or something like that...don't quote me. Santa on surfboards, palm trees, pineapples and plastic Christmas trees. It all felt very odd. Fun, but odd. It is also odd to think that this kind of tropical Christmas, without the song, English as the spoken language or big region-wide celebrations among the populace, is what will be most familiar to my children. What is their visual world? Theravada Buddhism, with its thousands of temples, thousands of Buddha and Hindu statues, tiny spirit houses for the land spirits, and the house spirits, and spirit shelves and small shrines in nearly every home, every business. Here Christmas is celebrated by very few and is a We
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