> The only mental context I have for people
> getting *that* dressed up to go to church is
> Pacific Islanders. They are the big-time
> religious ethnicity in this country, and if you
> drive through a strongly Polynesian part of
> town on a Sunday morning, you see plenty of
> families decked out like this. The women wear
> big hats, gloves, matching handbags and
> everything. The men wear a suit jacket, a tie
> and a formal lavalava. The little girls are so
> covered in frills and lace you can hardly see
> the actual child under the yards and yards of
> white ruffles, petticoats, gloves, and tiny
> little shiny white shoes.
>
> I tend to associate this sort of very strongly
> religious, church-going population almost
> exclusively with Pacific Islanders. That's one
> reason it seemed strange to see so many
> churches in the parts of the USA I visited.
> Especially as I can't picture any of the church-
> going American male Rinkies I know in a
> lavalava.

This is why other cultures are cool. See, at least in my mind, the whole getting really dressed up to go to church thing brings up images of Protestants in the Midwest in the 1930's going to small churches made of wood and painted white. Trying to picture that, but in Middle Earth, and with Polynesians rather than white or black people, and with "lavalavas" instead of pants, is such an insane image; it's kind of like when you cut out random pictures from magazines and try to put them together to make a somewhat sensical but still very weird new picture. Which, come to think of it, sounds like pretty much everything else about New Zealand. I think I should move there someday.

-Eric Sleator
Fri 17 Jan A.D. 2003