In Samoa, the future comes forward through a change in the calendar. This year, on that group of Pacific islands, December 30th will be skipped. The decision to temporarily change the place of Samoa in the world has commercial reasons: Samoa will be on the same day as New Zealand, Australia and China.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, said in April that the country was losing two working days in trade with New Zealand and Australia, when the plan to advance the clock 24 hours was announced. "While it is Friday in Samoa, it is already Saturday in New Zealand, and when it is Sunday in Samoa, it is already working day in Sydney (Australia) and Brisbane (New Zealand)".
He says that tourists will be able to celebrate the same day twice, because neighboring American Samoa is on the other side of the International Date Line.
That's it, the confusion in Samoa is because of the International Date Line. Take a look at the map, and you will understand the reason for the confusion:
The International Date Line (IDL) is an imaginary line that runs across the surface of the Earth, passing through the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and designates the place where each calendar day begins. It is approximately 180° long, opposite the Main Meridian, but its layout is full of deviations, to circumvent some territories and groups of islands. Crossing the IDL eastwards results in a 24-hour subtraction, so the traveler repeats the same date west of the line. Its crossing westwards causes the addition of one day, that is, the date on the east side of the line plus one calendar day. The line is necessary to have a fixed border on the globe, although arbitrary, where the calendar date changes.
The prime meridian is the meridian (line of longitude), where the longitude is defined as 0°. The Main Meridian and its 180° opposite meridian (at 180° of longitude), almost all traversed by the International Date Line, with the deviations seen on the map, form a large circle that divides the Earth into the Western (West) and Eastern (East) Hemispheres. At an international conference in 1884, it was decided that the current Main Meridian would pass through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, southeast London, United Kingdom. Better known as the International Meridian, or Greenwich Meridian, it was defined arbitrarily, unlike parallels of latitude, which are defined by the Earth's axis of rotation, with its poles at 90° and the equator at 0°.
Returning then to the case of Samoa, his prime minister says that "So it will be possible to have a birthday twice in the same year, for example - on separate days - just by flying for less than an hour across the Pacific, without leaving the island chain of Samoa. Westpac Bank Samoa also has good news for its clients. Westpac will not charge interest on loans on the missing day. It will still pay interest on deposits in investment accounts on the day it is deleted from the calendar, although the law does not oblige it to do so. Two years ago Malielegaoi changed his driving hand from the right side of the street to the left, as it is in Australia and New Zealand.
Samoa had already jumped the International Date Line before. In 1892, its then king was convinced to adapt the national calendar to that of ships traveling westward to San Francisco in the United States.
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