White Sunday

This weekend was a long weekend for us for the celebration of White Sunday. This is something we had not heard of in NZ, but the following text from Wikipedia explains what it is all about.

White Sunday is a holiday in Samoa, falling on the second Sunday in October. It is a day for the children of Samoa where they are specially appreciated by their parents and their communities. They have to perform for their parents and relatives in church by ways of reciting bible verses (tauloto), performing creative dances and dramas.
On White Sunday the women and children dress completely in white clothing. Some of them trim the clothes with the other two colours of the Samoan flag, red and blue. Men will wear white shirts with either white slacks or the traditional lavalava. If a lavalava is worn it may not be white.
White Sunday is celebrated all over the world, wherever a Samoan church community exists.
In Samoa they call this day "Lotu Tamaiti".Translation in English is "Children's Day" or the "Children's service"

So, aside from enjoying the extra day off (more about what we did on the long weekend on a later post) we also decided to attend the church service on Sunday morning. We both got dressed up in our Sunday best - Angela all in white (well, cream actually) and me in a black lavalava and white shirt - and headed for the local church. I think we looked the part, but still stood out as the only Palagis in the church.

The entire service etc was in Samoan so we couldn't understand all that was being said, but we got the gist of what was going on. The minister started by baptising the younger children then we got to see all the children giving their performances. The Sunday School teacher had obviously been very busy teaching the kids various action songs, plays etc. They started with the youngest children (pre-schoolers) singing some songs and worked up through groups of increasing age. Most of them were really good, of course the younger ones were the funniest - all trying their best but getting out of time or forgetting the words. The older groups (teenagers) were very good with some very strong singers and confident actors and dancers. There were also a few cases of stage fright, embarrassment and a few tears!

As we have seen with other events here, the Samoans sure know how to put on a show that lasts a long time! We got to the grand finale when all the children got on stage so sing their final songs together. With so many children and so many performances it took 2 hours to get through them all, but it was certainly very interesting for us to see this first hand and we enjoyed the experience. Angela will be uploading some photos soon showing the church and some of the children dressed up in their White Sunday outfits.