Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day.
Thus spake Bing Crosby and a whole load of artists who covered his song.
It's not that Hawaiian has a completely different word for Christmas -- it's just that Kalikimaka is the closest that Hawaiian can possibly get to the word Christmas.
You see, Christmas is a very English word.
It's actually from Old English.
Cristes mæsse, the festival or mass of Christ.
But the Hawaiian language, along with a lot of Polynesian languages, uses only a few consonants and has much more restrictive phonotactic rules.
Phonotactics are the way that languages put sounds together -- so, nought, sought, wrought, and bought are all possible English words... but ngought isn't.
You can end an English word with ng - ring, sing, thinking... but you can't start one.
It's not allowed.
