WAILUKU — Family and tradition are central to the holiday season, and at one small inn on Maui, the two come together in an only-in-Hawai'i way that tells a warm story of Hawaiian craft, multicultural traditions and the inclusive meaning of 'ohana — family.

The living room of The Old Wailuku Inn at Ulupono drips with decorations. The 10 bedrooms have Christmas quilts on the beds. What's widely regarded as the first American "portrait" of Santa has the place of honor over the Steinway upright piano, next to a Christmas tree covered with handmade lauhala ornaments: flowers and wreaths and cornucopias, fish and stars and even a clever little reindeer.

Ask lauhala artist Auntie Kahili Cummings how she learned to make these intricate little pieces and she just shrugs merrily. She adapts an idea from here, a particular plaiting technique from there, and all of a sudden, Prancer is standing on his four deftly folded feet.

As guests casually come and go — of 12 at the breakfast table that morning, all but two were returnees, and they tend to treat the place like a home away from home — Cummings reminisces with innkeeper Janice Fairbanks and her former student Pohaku Kaho'ohanohano, 33.

"Down Paukukalo Beach, there was lauhala; and my Uncle Kainea and my mom and us, we would go and all we took with us for the whole day was salt and maybe a little poi," said Cummings, 88, whose mother and aunties were weavers and quilters before her. "We would lou (knock down the leaves) and my mom would ko (strip away thorns and thick ribs) and my uncle would go down to the beach and fish. Whatever he caught, that's what we had for lunch. We would stay all day and we would come home all dirty, but, ho!, was good."

Janice Fairbanks smiles. This is just what she loves: to see the historic 1924 house serve not just as a place for visitors to stay but as a place where they can experience Hawai'i's specialness and hear about old times.

The story of Christmas at The Old Wailuku Inn begins long before Janice Fairbanks fell in love with this house and, with her hotelier husband, Tom, set out to create the kind of relaxed, welcoming place she likes to visit, filled with books, collectibles, period pieces and Hawaiiana.

The story begins 35 years ago when Janice and Tom met at the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel, where both worked in the food and beverage department (Tom still works there). Janice soon learned that Tom had a rather illustrious ancestor: His great grandfather was Thomas Nast, a famed 19th-century cartoonist and caricaturist for Harper's Weekly who, in 1862, created an illustration that became the modern prototype of the Jolly Old Elf, with the white beard, fur-lined crimson suit and so on.

You get the feeling this didn't hurt Tom's chances with Janice one bit. Because Janice Fairbanks was already a Santaholic. "I'm still a kid. I believed in Santa as a child and I wanted my children to have that," she recalled. Then Tom's aunt sent them an 1880 book in which Nast's many Santa images were gathered.

The result is a collection of Santas so vast Janice can't even find them all, or fully count them — she thinks there are about 400 pieces. Santa ornaments. Santa images. Santa vases. Santa statues. Santa plates. Santa everything.

The fact that the inn attracts so many repeat visitors at Christmastime, far from their own trees and decorations, gives Fairbanks the perfect excuse to decorate the house within an inch of its life. But she'd probably do it anyway.

Fairbanks also wanted her children to know about and celebrate the traditions of all their ethnic roots. Tom's German heritage — Nast's Santa refers heavily back to the elves of German folk stories — was as much a part of that as her Japanese-Filipino background.

She continues this commitment to multiculturalism at the inn. Just glancing around the parlor while she talks, you see this ecleticism carried to a somehow harmonious extreme: lamps made of hand-carved bamboo roots, a Japanese tansu, a Chinese chest, a gate-leg table, dobby cloth cushions next to others made of Indian silk.

This year's lauhala-themed tree is in honor of the 10th anniversary of Auntie Kahili's contributions over the years — including appearing in the first publicity pictures for the inn — and quilting pieces for them.

Best for Fairbanks, and for eavesdropping guests, is just to listen to Kahili and Kaho'ohanohano talk about lauhala, its place in their lives and the culture.

Once when she was a young girl, Auntie Kahili recalls, she was participating in a speech competition at her church and was sent to the home of the local doctor, whose wife was to coach her. There, she saw beautiful fine lauhala mats on the floors, and even going up the steps. "Oh, how nice!," she thought.

Later, when she got home, her mother asked if she'd noticed the mats. "Yes, why?," young Kahili asked. "We made those," her mother answered. Her mother and aunt had covered Dr. Lightner's home in mats to pay for his care of one of Kahili's sisters who had been ill.

"That's how it was. You did with what you had," she said.

Auntie Kahili didn't learn lauhala arts directly from her mother. She actually didn't start weaving until her children were grown and she took a class sponsored by Alu Like, a nonprofit agency that assists Hawaiians. "I was so lolo," said Auntie Kahili, cheerfully castigating herself. "I was already old and here I'm trying to make a fan. But I took my fan home and I practiced and I practiced and I practiced."

Kahili and her former student Kaho'ohanohano, a Ke'anae artist known for his particularly fine hats, learned in the Hawaiian way. You don't ask, you watch; you don't question why, you do.

Kaho'ohanohano said one common mistake his students make is to take notes while he's showing them. Better to watch and imitate the moves, he said; notes just tend to confuse you later. Only in doing can you experience the mistakes and successes that are your true teacher, they say.

"You just do, then later on you find out why," Auntie Kahili said. In the end, Kaho'ohanohano said, a skilled weaver can look at a piece of lauhala and tell how it was made — even, sometimes, whether it was an older person, where the hala came from, whether the maker was right- or left-handed.

Lauhala was both a men's and women's pursuit, though the men and children tended to be most involved in the gathering and preparation of the materials — mostly hala, but also certain ferns and coconut.

To weavers, groves of hala — the pandanus or screw pine, Pandanus odaratissimus — are almost characters. Auntie Kahili refers to this grove and that as though they were old friends. Kaho'ohanohano talks about what makes the best hala for weaving: a tree near but not on the ocean (salt helps cure the leaves but too much wind beats them up); long, wide leaves; clean as possible and and free of bugs; young leaves that are newly dry. The leaves are trimmed, stripped of thorns, wiped clean, and then rolled tightly and neatly secured to form a kuka'a — literally, a wheel. "They used to have rolling contests and whoever's one fell apart, he would be called stingy, because he didn't use enough," Kaho'ohanohano said.

He believes one reason he has progressed relatively rapidly (he's only been weaving since 1994) is that it's in his blood. His great-grandmother Kumaie'a, was a weaver. Once, he dreamed of her, making a hat on an old-fashioned pahu (hat mold). Now he can make a hat so tight and even-textured that the sun doesn't show through the cracks, but so relaxed that the fit is supple and comfortable.

Janet Fairbanks gently teases the young weaver, trying to get him to commit to make her a large mat for the parlor; the Tahitian ones don't last, she says. He'd rather do hats.

She takes a twisted garland of grass fiber from the Christmas tree and shows it to him. "Four-strand," he says, turning it in his strong hands.

"Cute, this thing," says Auntie.

She gets a wicked twinkle in her eye and hands the garland back: "You go try 'em and you teach me!"

Looks like another lauhala Christmas in the making for The Old Wailuku Inn.