More than 125 years later, the Celebration evoked piety and fun
Extracts from New Zealand History
Photo for 123RF by Irina Berenshteyn
Auckland, December 25, 2023
Christmas in New Zealand is less about snow and sleigh bells and more about sun, sand and barbecues in the backyard.
The Christian origins of Christmas meant that before contact with Europeans, the celebration had no place in the calendar of Aotearoa.
Violence and Destruction
The first celebration of Christmas in New Zealand coincided with Abel Tasman’s voyage of discovery in 1642. Things did not get off to a good start.
On 19 December 1642, the Dutch East India Company ships Heemskerck and Zeehaen anchored in Mohua Golden Bay, the home of Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri iwi.
Clearly, the locals felt threatened by these strange vessels and people.
One of Tasman’s small boats was rammed by a waka as it was passing between the two ships. Four of Tasman’s men were killed. Several Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri may have been hit when the Dutch opened fire on them.
Tasman saw no reason to hang around. After naming the place Moordenaers Baij (Murderers’ Bay), he immediately set sail. His expedition reached the Manawatū coast of the North Island before crossing the entrance of Cook Strait and anchoring east of Stephens and D’Urville islands.
Here the crew encountered what many Wellingtonians have become used to at Christmas time – poor weather. While sheltering from a storm, the Dutch enjoyed the first Christmas dinner in New Zealand – freshly killed pork from the ship’s menagerie washed down with extra rations of wine.
The next celebration of Christmas in New Zealand occurred during James Cook’s first voyage in 1769. The crew of the Endeavour marked the occasion by feasting on ‘Goose Pye’ for their Christmas dinner while battling heavy seas off the top of the North Island.
There were no geese in sight, so the crew had to improvise, using the magnificent gannet that had been shot in preparation for the feast by the ship’s noted botanist, Joseph Banks.
Apparently, the Endeavour’s crew spent Boxing Day ‘nursing hangovers,’ launching a tradition that now has a long history in New Zealand.
The First Christmas Service
Russell Clark’s painting of Samuel Marsden preaching on Christmas Day 1814 at Hohi (Oihi) Bay in the Bay of Islands is how many New Zealanders have visualised the first Christmas Church Service in this country.
Clark’s work, painted to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the event, shows Marsden preaching from a makeshift pulpit to a large group of Māori and Europeans. Ruatara, the Ngāpuhi leader whom Marsden had met in Port Jackson (Sydney), translated the sermon. He can be seen to Marsden’s right (in the picture). This service marked the beginning of the Christian mission to New Zealand, but was it the first Christmas service in the country?
On Christmas Day 1769, the French explorer Jean François Marie de Surville and his crew were in Doubtless Bay in the Far North. On board the St Jean Baptiste was a Dominican priest, Father Paul-Antoine de Villefeix. While no records of the event survive, it seems very likely that such an important Catholic festival would have been marked by a Mass on board the ship. But in the absence of hard evidence, New Zealand’s English colonial traditions have favoured Marsden’s claim to this first.
Santa/Christmas Parades
Santa or Christmas Parades take place throughout New Zealand in November and December each year. They began in the main centres in the early 20th century. They were established by department stores to promote the arrival of in-store Santas, to attract customers.
George and Kersley Ltd Wellington store’s ‘The Economic’ appears to have been the first to Parade their Santa. In 1905, they invited local children to come to see ‘Mother and Father Christmas’ arrive at the railway station. The following year, the pair stopped off in Hutt Valley and Petone en route to the store in Lambton Quay, whilst another character, Punch, visited the suburbs and the hospital.
Over the next two decades, Santa became a Christmas fixture at department stores, which sought more and more elaborate ways to promote their Santa’s arrival.
The journeys by car and train that characterised early Parades were dropped in favour of more exciting means of travel.
During the 1930s Christchurch store Armstrong’s had Santa arrive on an elephant, while Farmers in Auckland and the DIC in Christchurch had their Santas arrive by plane (though he then had to travel by car to the store).
In 1937 disaster was narrowly averted when Farmers outdid all previous efforts by having their Santa parachute onto Auckland Domain.
Santa’s entourage grew during this period. Fairies and giants were popular choices.
In Farmers’ first ‘grand Parade’ in Auckland in 1934, Santa was accompanied by the Waggles and Goggles, The Fat Boy, The Man that Walks on his Hands, Harold Lloyd, the Giant and the Big Fiddle. The following year local competitor George Court’s Paraded Santa slongside ‘the Boop family of giants.’
The Second World War brought a temporary halt to the Parades. By 1948, Farmers had reinstituted their Auckland Parade, and Hay’s in Christchurch held their inaugural Parade with a series of floats depicting nursery rhymes and seasonal themes.
The growing commercialism
The next few decades were a period of relative stability for Santa Parades. Department Stores came to dominate those held in the main centres: Farmers in Auckland, James Smith’s in Wellington and Hay’s in Christchurch.
Many of the elaborate floats created for these events still grace Santa Parades today. Many of the traditions established during this period, such as Santa being preceded by several other acts, are hallmarks of the modern Santa Parade.
By the late 1980s, the Parades were becoming too expensive for individual department stores to run. Between 1989 and 1991 the longstanding Parades in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were taken over by charitable trusts. The Parades became more overtly commercial as the trusts sold off the naming rights to both the entire Parade and individual floats and characters.
At the same time, the Parades became more representative of New Zealand society, with a broad range of community and voluntary groups participating alongside local businesses and traditional floats.
The Parades were frequently criticised for being overly commercial. Several Councils considered stopping or cutting their funding and directing it to more ‘community-orientated’ events like Christmas in the Park. Wellington’s last large-scale Christmas Parade was mounted in 2015. While many Parades receive funding from councils and community trusts, they also rely heavily on commercial sponsors.
The Pōhutukawa Tree
The Pōhutukawa Tree (Metrosideros Excelsa) with its crimson flower has become an established part of the New Zealand Christmas tradition. This iconic Kiwi Christmas tree, which often features on greeting cards and in poems and songs, has become an important symbol for New Zealanders at home and abroad.
In 1833, the missionary Henry Williams described holding a service under a ‘wide spreading Pōhutukawa. The first known published reference to the Pōhutukawa as a Christmas Tree came in 1857 when flowers of the scarlet Pōhutukawa or the Christmas Tree formed part of table decorations at a feast put on by Ngāpuhi leader Eruera Patuone.
In 1941, Army Chaplain Ted Forsman composed a carol in which he referred to ‘Your red tufts, our snow.’ Forsman was serving in the Libyan Desert at the time, hardly the surroundings were normally associated with Pōhutukawa.
Many of his fellow New Zealanders, though, would have instantly identified with the image.
Today schoolchildren sing about how ‘the native Christmas tree of Aotearoa’ fills their hearts ‘with Aroha.’
Pōhutukawa and its cousin Rata also hold a prominent place in Māori tradition.
Legends tell of Tāwhaki, a young warrior who attempted to find heaven to seek help in avenging the death of his father. He fell to earth and the crimson flowers are said to represent his blood.
A gnarled, twisted Pōhutukawa on the windswept clifftop at Cape Rēinga, near the northernmost tip of New Zealand, is of great significance to many New Zealanders.
For Māori, this small tree is known as ‘the place of leaping.’ It is from here that the spirits of the dead begin their return journey to their traditional homeland of Hawaiki. The spirits leap off the headland and climb down the roots of the 800-year-old tree, descending into the underworld.
