Celebrate Year 2K Tonga Time

     The posting that the new millennium would open in Tonga elicited puzzled "Where´s that ???" An especially dear WAISer has sent me a long article on Tonga entitled "Sun shines first on the real Polynesia." It is so flattering that our Tonganese housekeepers want to keep it. Captain Cook called Tonga the "Friendly Islands"--there are 170 of the, only 36 inhabited-- and the people are genuinely so. They are also polite and god-loving. Tonga has been called the most Christian country in the world. On Sundays everything closes down, and the people, headed by the 81-year old King Taufa'ahou Tupou IV, go to sing beautifully in the Free Wesleyan Centenary Church. (Is Tupou, who runs the Stanford gas station, a relative? ) Our Saia is training to become a preacher, and Soana reads the Bible in her spare time.
     Although related to the Samoans, Tonganese are different. Their dances are different. Soana once toured Japan as part of a Tonganese dance team. The difference may be deeper. Is the title "The real Polynesia" a slap at Margaret Mead, whose famous Coming of age in Samoa (1936) was later ridiculed as a naive idealization? Is the author of the article another Margaret Mead? I hope not.
     The dawn of the new millennium will not disturb my routine any more than today's Big Game will. I intend to celebrate it Tonga time, four hours different from that of San Francisco. So I will celebrate it at 4 a.m. on December 31. The excuse to celebrate is just that. Only by the Christian calendar will it be Year 2K or 2M. Not all calendars change days at midnight, as the Roman sexta (siesta) indicates. The moment of celebration is therefore quite arbitrary. So why get excited?

Ronald Hilton - 11/20/99