The Second Day Of Xmas

It's Boxing Day and has started with a windy cloud scattered day with the sun trying to get through to provide some warmth to Taupo, NZ. It'll be OK later. It was a quiet Xmas which started with hangi stones being heated on a fire outside my son's Hatepe home by Lake Taupo. The wood was kanuka which blazes away without thoughts of burning holes in ozone layers. I wonder about that. All our ancestors used fire for many centuries not to mention those that occured naturally through volcanic action, bush fires and the like. Surely the earth and it's people were building up carbon debts long before cars and coal fired power plants.

Anyway after the stones were hot enough my son and grandsons (it's a mans job this) raked them into a hole already dried out by the embers of the fire, put the food (pork, mutton, chicken, spuds, kumara, in that order) into a round net container and placed it into the hole. They wrapped the container with wet cloths and put wet sacking over it in such a way that when they buried all with earth, they would then be able to scrape the earth off and peel off the sacking and cloth without the dirt falling into the hangi two and a half hours later.

This kai and all the rituals associated with it ( it's hot thirsty work so a few beers don't go amiss) is our traditional Maori Xmas as we celebrate that birth 2007 years ago in Bethlehem. Once the hangi's down then it's back to the house for Grandpa to act as Santa and give out all the presents mainly to the two great grans who are lucky to be present. Then we pulled out the hangi and served it (a man's job). The dessert was woman's work. After that for Grandpa it was a good snooze by the tele.

Well that was Xmas. Later we may go to town to take advantage of the Boxing Day sales. Just a thought, though. What would happen if we had no shops to go to and an electrical storm wiped out internet shopping?