(Originally written November 2025)
When I was young my family was rich. Not super-rich like the Kardashians—or almost everyone in the beach town of The Summer I Turned Pretty—but regular rich.
We did not have a mansion, but I grew up in a Honolulu, Hawai‘i house that is now worth $3 million in a neighborhood where ours was the cheap house.
We did not have a Ferrari, but we did have a handful of entry-level luxury and sports cars. Thunderbird, Monte Carlo, Lincoln Continental. And a boat.
We did not have a maid, but The Maids came to clean our house every two weeks, which I disliked because I had to clean so they could clean (a concept I did not understand until I had my own children and home).
We also had a swimming pool and a marble foyer and a blue jacuzzi in my parents’ bathroom—plus a telephone next to the toilet—which was larger than my current bedroom. The bathroom was larger, not the jacuzzi or the telephone.
I also knew things.
I knew my mom only wore Bally and Ferragamo shoes, and her dresses and pantsuits all needed to be dry cleaned.
I knew that flying first class was superior to flying coach because they had giant seats and served martini glass shrimp cocktail and hot fudge sundaes and warm chocolate chip cookies.
I knew most of my classmates’ fathers, and some of their mothers, worked for my father.
I knew my father’s bulky Motorola mobile phone back in the 80s, with its thick black antennae, was as heavy in status as it was in weight.
So, you know, regular rich.
And one of my favorite parts of being regular rich were the Christmas parties.
My immigrant father built the largest roofing company in Hawai‘i out of nothing. Literally nothing. And every year he rented out the big private room at The Flaming Chuckwagon because “their buffet had the BEST prime rib.” (I was not a fan of prime rib, but I was a fan of the salad bar’s baby corn because of Tom Hanks’ Big. Even though baby corn tastes terrible.)
Being the daughter of the boss, I could do whatever I wanted. My friends and I rug burned our knees crawling under long wooden tables between the heels and loafers of his 100+ employees and their families. We played hide and seek, plucked maraschino cherries off the Black Forest cake, and once took to the stage for a subpar performance of Jingle Bells for which we each received a $20 bill from Gail, my father’s secretary. I suppose that’s the first time I was paid to perform.
We weren’t the only ones receiving money. Crisp $20 bills were handed to anyone who would answer the MC’s question or sing a Christmas carol, with $50 and $100 bills pressed into employees’ palms all evening. There were huge snowflake wrapped parcels for the kids, every foiled layer revealing a gift card, gummy worms, bubble wands, paper dolls, more cash.
There were cellophane bags of popcorn as tall as me, piles of dark blue Danish butter cookie tins, foil-wrapped chocolate nutcrackers, candy canes of all sizes (peppermint and rainbow), live musicians, someone telling jokes only locals would understand, and then, and THEN, the bingo cards would come out.
The back of the hall was lined with long tables straining beneath the weight of the prizes. Monstrous televisions, sleek VCRs, Craftsman 50-piece tool sets, 12-piece assortments of nonstick pots and pans. There were microwaves, toaster ovens, radio alarm clocks, double cassette players and even a CD player. There were giant stuffed bears, bright-eyed dolls with ringlet hair, tricycles, and a lamb wearing roller skates I stared at so long Gail let me take her home.
It was joy. Wonder. Delight. It was the feeling of Christmas. It was magic that would never end.
But everything ends.
The final Christmas party took place in a Chinese restaurant in Kalihi. We sat at a single round table in the back against faded emerald wallpaper beneath fluorescent lights. There were no televisions to be won, no stage or prime rib or fistfuls of $20 bills, just plates of chicken cake noodles and sweet and sour pork and my father thanking his most loyal employees for the very last time.
Then bankruptcy. Then losing the house, the cars, the jewelry, the Ferragamo shoes, and the mass exodus of so-called friends. Then other things that explain why my family never had another Christmas party, ever.
And maybe this is why I have always wanted to throw a Christmas party. Maybe in the transition from rich to poor, somewhere between going to Ruth’s Chris for filet mignon and holding a box of expired spaghetti from the Foodbank, something in me latched onto my memories of holiday magic and swore I would recreate it when I grew up.
It’s been over 30 years with no party.
So when I tell you we are throwing an LKE Dojo Christmas party for our students this year, my very first holiday party of my own, it might not sound like a big deal. But it is a big deal to me. It is a big deal to the little girl that lives in me.
Will it be lavish? No, but it will be cheery. It will be fun. And it will be mine.
Love,
Angela
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