Bound For Hawaii, Obama Wishes America 'Mele Kalikimaka'

With a warm Hawaiian holiday vacation on his mind, President Barack Obama finished his year-end press conference Friday with a Christmas sign-off that no doubt made the Aloha State proud.

“Thank you, everybody. Mele Kalikimaka,” Obama said, the Hawaiian greeting for “Merry Christmas.”

If you look closely, Obama appears to be on the brink of tossing up a shaka ― a hand gesture common as a salute in Hawaii and in other surf cultures.

Friday’s press conference ― likely Obama’s last in office ― was a bit of final presidential business before the first family departed Washington for Hawaii.

Obama spent much of his childhood on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Since being elected to the White House in 2008, he and his family have traveled back each year for Christmas vacation.

According to a White House press pool report, the Obamas boarded Air Force One just before 6 p.m. Friday. Both the president and first lady “made a brief wave at the top of the stairs and then bade farewell to winter for the next 2.5 weeks,” pool reporter Gardiner Harris of The New York Times wrote.

This year’s vacation, which runs through the New Year holiday, will include a historic visit between Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Pearl Harbor, where the two will remember victims of Japan’s attack 75 years ago.

In a statement earlier this month, Obama said the meeting would serve as a “testament that even the most bitter of adversaries can become the closest of allies.”

Watch Obama’s full sign-off below. His Hawaiian Christmas greeting can be found at the very end.