Manuia le Kerisimasi

Every year the government puts on a Christmas carol show. Each agency dresses in matching outfits and sings on stage in the central pavilion. The event is televised and, since there is not much else to show on Samoan television, rebroadcast repeatedly throughout the year.

Of course, the Attorney General’s Office is one of the agencies that participates in this event. As an employee of the AG’s Office, I too participated.

The event is taken very seriously by the various departments. Choir practice starts weeks early and lasts a few hours every day. Since it’s a government event, this clearly falls into job duties, and is thus done during work hours. The result is that most of the executive branch shuts down during practice, and the mere mention of the words “choir practice” explains away any questions as to why nothing is getting done. It’s such a mess that the Police Department would have one person staffing the place after noon on any given day (noon was lunch, and then after lunch was choir practice, until 4:00, which is closing time).

I was only able to find the time to attend a couple choir practices. Essentially, we just ran through the songs a couple times and left. All of our songs were in Samoan, which I can barely read, much less interpret. I had no idea what we were supposed to be singing, but by listening closely, I could at least pronounce some of the words.

A few words would pop out. Agnelu is angel, Iesu is Jesus, Kerisimasi is Christmas, and so on. Unfortunately, some lines went simply too fast for me to read off. At those moments I was forced to just move my mouth around until I could grasp on to something intelligible.

Finally, it was time for the main event. The event spans three nights, from Wednesday to Friday. Our group was to go fourth on Wednesday night. We were all to meet by a immigration registration building to pull ourselves together and make sure we were ready for our performance. That’s what the boss said at least.

I arrived an hour late, but was dressed and ready to go. I picked up my outfit from the fabric place the night before. It consisted of a blue lavalava (Samoan skirt) and a flowered Hawaiian looking shirt. I also wore white ula, a necklace made of plastic nuts.

When I arrived at the meeting place, all I found were five Samoans from the Immigration Office drinking beer. They were “warming up” and asked if I wanted to warm up too. I did.

Everything was supposed to start at 7, but that just meant the governor began speaking. Rather than listen to a political speech given in a language we didn’t understand, we continued to hang out and warm up. About 9:30, somebody came by and said the third group was finishing up, so we should head over. We all moved down towards the pavilion and waited for the other agencies to finish their songs.

When it was our turn, we mounted the steps and took our spots on stage. Men on stage right, women on stage left. The keyboardist warmed up his preset song list and the conductor nodded at us. The AG gave a short speech about the spirit of Christmas or something, and then the keyboard started playing. We started singing.

Having watched some of the other groups, and having seen others later, I realized what choreographed moves and melody can do for a singing group. We did not have that. In fact, during the final practice, the conductor said we should sway to a couple of the songs. And if we wanted to dance at parts, we could.

It’s amazing how difficult swaying can be when you haven’t practiced. For one, everyone is supposed to sway in the same direction at the same time, and preferably to the beat of the music. Our swaying was more of a bunch of people bumping into each other.

Singing was also a bit difficult. We actually had a false start on the second song (which happened to be a Samoan Christmas song put to the tune of Ricky Martin’s La Vida Loca), and the keyboard guy was so disgusted he simply stopped and told us to start over.

But the dancing, oh the dancing. During the faster songs, you couldn’t help dancing. Well, most of us could help it, but not me. Nothing was planned, so we could do whatever we wanted. I danced and got really into the songs. Somehow, the words I couldn’t say during practice came out during the performance, and I just let loose and had a good time.

It was disappointingly short and we went home from there, after taking a few pictures of us in our outfits. Some people stayed out and partied, but I went straight to bed. After all, I still had to work in the morning.

The repercussions came the next day. Since the event was televised, and only me and another gal from our office really danced, we were the main event on TVs across the island. So much so that people were calling into the radio stations commenting on how much they like the pilangi lawyers. When I came to court, people I didn’t even know said how much they enjoyed watching us. The other gal, Lisa, got the same attention. When she went to the vet for her cat, the guy told her she was “number one.”

The show is rebroadcast throughout the year.

I'll put up pictures and the video once we get it from the TV station.