Waikiki has the moonlight dancing on the water, the lights from tall buildings and the flicker of tiki torches to illuminate the night. During the holidays, these beacons compete with all sorts of island-themed Christmas displays that gleam and twinkle along the tourist district.
Downtown has streetlights and brake lights and stop lights, the annual display around Honolulu Hale and the strings of holiday lanterns around the Palace. The special Honolulu City Lights add to the regular Honolulu city lights.
Waikele has become known for coordinated cul-de-sac light extravaganzas; sophisticated displays of neighborly feats of engineering set to music and captured with drone video. Waipahu is traditionally crazy for Christmas lights and parol stars and, truth be told, known for a penchant for premature New Year’s pyrotechnics.
But on the other side of the Koolaus, Waimanalo — that country town that follows its own aesthetic and keeps its own counsel — is lit up for the holidays as well, but not in any sort of organized townie way. Waimanalo, a community that is always unapologetically itself, is lit up for the holidays as only Waimanalo can be, with pockets of emphatic lights piercing the silky dark night.
On one side is the Makapuu Lighthouse and its slow strobe on the cliff above the ocean.
On the other are the lights from the Olomana Golf Course.
In between are some citizen light displays that manage to be ostentatious and homey at the same time. Something about a string of lights on a simple family home shining brightly in the rural dark makes the effect so much more dramatic, like a spotlight on a dark stage.
One home is resplendent in purple lights, a violet purple, like the hair of a club kid or a laser pointer. Among the dazzling glow of grape is a string of red bulbs blinking off and on, off and on. The Waimanalo-ness of the Christmas scene is the relaxed garage party going on under the profusion of purple. In Waimanalo, if you decorate your house, you leave your front door open or sit outside to watch all the people admiring your house.
Some skillful elves have climbed up tall coconut trees along the main road and twisted strings of colored lights from the ground to the fronds. People have tacked hedge lights to the sides of their houses. Even the protest site at Sherwoods, where community members are keeping vigil against the threat of development from the city, has strings of Christmas lights strung through trees.
Not as festive is the blue light from a cop car checking in on the protesters. There are Christmas lights among the tents lining the beach park along the main road, but these are subtle. No need to draw attention.
The drive from Kaiwi shoreline into Waimanalo along those dark sea cliffs has no street lights, so entering the neighborhood is like being borne into light. Not every house is decorated, but the ones that are stand out in the country town that has fought so hard to stay country.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
