Several locations are named for important days on religious calendars
Special to the Herald
“How’d you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?
“How’d you like to spend the holiday away across the sea?
“How’d you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?
“How’d you like to hang a stocking on a great big coconut tree?”
Written by Lyle Moraine in 1946 and recorded by artists such as Jimmy Buffett and Bob Dylan, this novelty tune celebrates leaving the snow and sleigh bells behind and spending the holiday on a warm sandy beach, waiting for Santa to arrive on a canoe.
The song may conjure up fantasy images of similar “hapa-haole” songs of that era, but Christmas Island is a real place.
So are Easter Island, Pentecost Island, Assumption Island and Ascension Island, all places having the distinction of being “named” by Europeans on ships who found themselves in the proximity of those locales on or about certain holy days on the Christian calendar.
Here are profiles of those islands, some discovered by an internet search.
Christmas Island
Christmas Island is Kiritimati, 1,340 nautical miles south of Hawaii. It’s among the largest of 33 or so islands that make up the Republic of Kiribati, pronounced “Kiribas,” which extends from the Line Islands in the east to the Micronesian Gilbert Islands in the west.
Its citizens speak Gilbertese. “Kiritimati” is the Gilbertese transliteration of “Christmas,” the two-letter combination “ti” pronounced as “s.”
Kiritimati is home to 1,700 people and is a popular tourist and sports-fishing destination.
Capt. James Cook first visited Kiritimati on Christmas of 1770 and took the liberty of naming it after that holy day. That was eight years before the British explorer stumbled upon Hawaii.
Kiritimati also has a special connection to the Diocese of Honolulu. Up until the 1980s, the island, still called Christmas, was actually a part of the Honolulu diocese, along with other tiny locations in the neighborhood — Palmyra Atoll, Washington Island and Fanning Island.
Back in those days, Hawaii would regularly fly to the island a priest who brought sacramental, spiritual and material aid. Eventually, the diocese asked the Vatican to separate it from Kiribati, which it did. The island is now served by clergy from the Gilbert Islands.
Christmas Island, too
A Google search revealed a second Christmas Island. This one is an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, 220 miles south of Java, Indonesia.
The first European sighting of the island was by Richard Rowe in 1615. Capt. William Mynors later took the liberty of naming it Christmas on Dec. 25, 1643. It was first settled in the late 19th century.
Its main town and chief port is Flying Fish Cove on the northeastern part of the island, which is mostly covered by a national park.
According to the Wikipedia, Christmas Island’s population in 2016 was 1,843, mostly Asian Australians of Chinese, Malay and Indian descent.
Easter Island
Easter Island, now known by its Polynesian name Rapa Nui, marks the Eastern point of the Pacific’s Polynesian Triangle. It was named by the first European visitors, the Dutch, who called it Paaseiland, or “Easter Island,” after the day of their arrival there in 1722.
The 63-square-mile island is a dependency of the South American country of Chile, 2,200 miles to the west. It is famous for its 900 giant stone head statues called moai.
Its population of more than 3,000 is predominantly of Polynesian descent.
Assumption Island
Assumption Island is a small, 4-1/2-square-mile coral island in the Seychelles archipelago north of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It was discovered by Capt. Nicolas Morphey on Aug. 14, 1756, who named it after the feast day the next day.
Assumption is a former coconut plantation and guano mine. According to Wikipedia, it is famous for its pristine 3.4-mile white sandy beach which stretches on its southeast side. The internet reported a population of 20 in 2016.
Pentecost Island
The first European reported to lay eyes on Pentecost Island, one of 83 islands that make up the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, was Spanish explorer Pedro Fernandez de Quiros in April of 1606. It was again sighted on Pentecost Sunday, May 22, 1768, by Louis Antoine de Bougainville. Cook also stopped by during his voyage through the New Hebrides in 1774.
Pentecost Island is most famous for being the birthplace of the extreme sport of land-diving or bungee jumping. Every year between April and June, men jump from 70- to 100-foot-tall towers with vines tied to their feet. Visitors to Pentecost who witnessed the ceremony have included St. John Paul II in 1986 and Queen Elizabeth II in 1974.
Ascension Island
Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island south of the equator in the South Atlantic Ocean about 1,000 miles off the coast of Africa.
It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Islands.
Portuguese navigator Joao da Nova first sighted the island on March 25, 1501. It was named on May 20, 1503, the feast of the Ascension, by Afonso de Albuquerque. Dry and barren, the island had little appeal for passing ships, except as a source of fresh meat, and was not claimed for Portugal.
The island has served for decades as a British refueling station and today hosts one of four ground antennas that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System navigational system.
