The Adventures of Yapman: This is Christmas on Yap

Sing it out everyone. There happens to be this mind-blowingly amazing song about Christmas on Yap that I can only describe as having the “stuck in your head for hours” quality of “It’s a Small World” from Disney. It involves a lot of perfectly random lyrics that you cannot fully understand, but there are clear snippets of “There will be no sleigh this year.. something something. FIRE TRUCK” and “Pork wrapped in Taro leafs” and I believe there was some line in there about “canned spam.” Sadly, this chart-topper is yet to make it to youtube so I cannot share its pure musical glory with you, but it is probably one of those songs that you need to live on a tiny island for almost 6 months to truly appreciate.

“Merry Christmas!” from the island of Yap. (That is how you say Merry Christmas in Yapese…. Which means that basically, when Christianity – along with the story of the birth of Jesus – came to Yap – they never got around to making up a new word for it, so “Merry Christmas” just stuck)

On Christmas Eve, I had a lot of the ex-pats over for a nice traditional family style dinner. It turned out to be a perfect evening filled with lots of sharing of Christmas traditions and stories. We even wrote letters to Santa and then burned them on the back porch to make sure they got to him on time. Some people ended up hanging out until Midnight Mass.

The mass was absolutely incredible. St. Mary’s Church was beautifully decorated with palm leaves, native flowers, and lights. It was packed and absolutely pouring rain, so you had to dodge rain drops as they leaked through the roof or just kinda accepted it and sat right in a puddle (yes… I sat right in a puddle and was too proud to move…) There was a traditional local dance performed by women from Dalipebinaw and they added lots of garland, tinsel, and glitter to their palm leaves and flowers to really add some Christmas spirit to the dance. My favorite part of the mass was that all of the songs were traditional Christmas carols, but they were sung in Yapese. Silent night was simply breath-taking during Communion.

I spent Christmas day with my Yapese family at a little barbeque in our koyeng. It was a simple way to spend the holiday with friends and family. For dnner, I went to the Jesuit residence where we had a fantastic turkey dinner with some good friends who have been in the Micronesian islands for many years. To round out my Christmas festivities, I was able to Skype with my family on the 26^th while they were all together on their Christmas night.

This Christmas season may not have been what I am used to, but it still continues to be my favorite time of year as it is filled with love, laughter, and family.