> As a little girl, when we were getting ready for church, and Mom said it was time to put away our black patent leather shoes, and get out our white gloves, white sandals, and white wicker purses, I don't think she was entirely being a slave to fashion. I think part of it, at least, was simply an acknowledgement of the changing of the season.
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> koala"yes, we really did wear gloves"mom

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.

Brunnen-"although, believe me, I haven't tried all that hard"G