Congratulations! We’ll be just an island over at the same time!
We would’ve preferred to fly Hawaiian, but although their seats open up 330 days in advance, their award availability in the 2 weeks leading up to Christmas and for about 2 weeks after Christmas is so difficult to predict. If you want to use miles to book award seats on Hawaiian during Christmastime, you need to either be on your game and check the website every night when inventory gets loaded at, I believe, midnight Hawaii time; or sign up for alerts via Expert Flyer. For sure though, those cash fares will only go up from release and stay high until maybe a month or so before departure, when I notice a lot of movement on Hopper. Last year, we hadn't settled on dates when cash prices were released, and I saw fares on the 23rd and 24th go up from $380-something to $510 one-way when we finally booked in April. Fortunately, we each had $400 vouchers, but what could've been a free flight worked out to $110 per person. I kept checking for award fares too, and I don't think anything in economy before Christmas ever popped up by the time we booked; first class flights did show up for 80k HA miles, and I think I might've noticed some award availability in economy appear in June long after we had our flights, but they weren't saver awards.
We're flying United to HNL this year. Booked saver award seats at 22.5k UA miles apiece promptly at 334 days out.
You might not think this was the best redemption, but you saved yourself a lot of stress!