Choirs, Coups and Long Canoes

Where do you go to find a spirited Christmas celebration? Give me Fiji any day. As the temperature teases the freezing tick on the thermometer and our cat Moritz stalks the house looking for non-existent pools of light, my mind drifts on the trade winds to Fiji sunshine. I am a great fan of Fiji. I courted my wife on a cruise of Fiji’s islands in 1997, but ten years earlier I went there to do a documentary for American Public Radio and NPR that was supposed to have been a Christmas special featuring Fiji’s magnificent a capella choirs, but ended up as a rather strange tale of island politics: two coups d’etat, me being suspected of being CIA, a strange encounter with a drunken German arms dealer, But that’s a long story.

The program was an hour long, but I have shortened and updated it. A major part of the 16 1/2 minutes features the music of the Fiji islands ranging from a Fijian drinking song to familiar Christmas carols sung in Fijian. I would guess that there are few Fijians who cannot sing…magnificently. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, peace and joy during this holiday season.

Listen MP3
16:30
A CD with seven songs from The Holidays in Fiji is available in Our Store.

Did you know that Saint Nicholas is Baba Chaghaloo in Afghanastan? This among the factoids in my friend Georgia Hess’ history of a jolly fat man with a past.

Who Was Nicholas?

A few years ago I took a  night before the night before Christmas helicopter ride to where the spirits are high and the air is thin.  This is a short excerpt from “Gone Astray” an audio book of my stories that will be released by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange on iTunes and on CD early next year and distributed  public radio stations.

It is a mashup of Animal Crackers, Cracker Jacks, Willie Wonka and, uh, sex.

What ever happened to the idea of fun candy? As a kid I used to sit around with my pals biting the heads off of giraffes and the butts off hippos, giggling self-indulgently at my cleverness. Likewise with Cracker Jacks: one always opened the box from the bottom as that where the tschotske was buried. I knew it was a plastic whistle or something similarly lame, but the adventure was in the discovery. Imagine my delight when a friend brought my wife and me a Kama-Cao chocolate bar from Galleries Lafayette in Paris.

Kama-Cao is a treat in the tradition of my childhood favorites, an X-rated one. In fact you have to be over 18 years of age to buy this adult confection (which probably means that every 12 year old in Paris bought one for his playground sweetie). Kama-Cao, by chocolatier Francis Miot, features bite-sized squares of dark chocolate embossed with positions of the Kama Sutra. Every bite is a wonder. (“I wonder how they do that.”) And, like Cracker Jacks, there is a surprise inside. Hidden in one piece is a porcelain replica of one of the poses (there is a warning on the label: “Attention de ne pas vous casser une dent en croquant.” Hey kids: be the first in your neighborhood to collect them all!

Happy Valentines Day.