Christmas in New Zealand [Second Hand]

Christmas in New Zealand

Compiled by Sam Elder.

'The record of Maoriland's earliest association with Christmastide is enshrined as an everlasting memorial on the map. About three hundred years ago, on Christmas Day, 1642, England then being in the throes of civil warfare, Able Janszoon Tasman was beating up the west coast of the North Island, heavy-hearted at the loss, a few days earlier, of four of his seamen who had been clubbed to death by the Maoris in Massacre (now Golden) Bay. On Epiphany eve, having passed and named Cape Maria Van Diemen, he sighted a small group of islets to the northward (his last glimpse of our country) and, being both a good churchman and an explorer of some originality, he appropriately named them, not Epiphany Islands as a man of no imagination might have done, but Three Kings, a tribute to the Wise Men from the East who followed the Star until it stood over where the Young Child lay on that first Christmas of all.' From the Book of Christmas (1943).