Merry Christmas!!

-31.3C (-24.3F)
wind chill: -40.8C (-41.4F)

Merry Christmas!!

For the past few weeks now I’ve been trying and trying to figure out why it didn’t feel like Christmas at the South Pole. We have all the makings for Christmas. It’s definitely white, the decorations are up, and dinner is planned. We’ve had the “family” squabbles that always come up around the holidays. (In the galley, ours are mainly about how many hours of Christmas music can be tolerated without someone having to go to medical.)

Being Christmas can be a lonely and depressing time for many people far from home, management wouldn’t put up the holiday decorations until one week before. Their theory is it shortens the Christmas season triggering less depression. Nonetheless, someone put together a Charlie Brown Christmas tree out of scraps and placed it next to the Pole. It looks very cute in that sad, pathetic kind of way especially being it has such a prominent place at the apex of the Earth. Several large chunks of snow now surround the Pole. They’ve been moved there from other areas around the station for a snow sculpting contest. A few of them have been sculpted and look amazing!

Christmas is celebrated at the Pole similar to Thanksgiving. We have our big Christmas dinner yesterday, on Christmas Eve. The reasoning being that the majority of people have Christmas Eve and Day off from work and it’s better to overindulge before a day off than before a work day. On Christmas Eve the Santa Bowl took place which is a Rugby Match between cargo and fuels outside on the ice and snow. The snow and ice aren’t that forgiving and Sven from Sweeden dislocated his collar bone on the first play of the game. The dinning room was once again transformed for the big feast by blocking out the windows, fancy linens, candles, lights, and Christmas trees. Those of us in the galley worked all week and prepared beef Wellington, real mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, chocolate ganache cake, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, and Christmas sugar cookies to serve the 244 people on station.

Today, Christmas Day, I work again along with JB and Will giving the rest of the galley staff the day off. The Annual South Pole Race Around the World will take place in which anyone can walk, sled, run, ski, or use any method of non-motorized transport to go around the station and the Pole three times for a total of 2 miles. It’s my understanding that most people dress up really crazy and invent crazy modes of transportation for this race. Immediately afterwards, we put on a spectacular Christmas brunch for everyone. The day is then filled with groups getting together to open gifts sent from their families, a Christmas movie marathon, last week’s football tapes, and Quiz Club Christmas trivia contest.

As I was still struggling to figure out why it didn’t feel like Christmas, I began to wonder if the commercialization actually contributed to the holiday feelings. All of us dream about a Christmas in absence of the commercials, malls, sales, marketing, craziness, and hectic life that happens this time of year, but now that I’ve experienced it, there seems to be a real void where that stuff goes. Perhaps it’s from all the years of conditioning that the stress and craziness are just a part of Christmas.

In the northern hemisphere, Christmas happens during the darkest time of year with the shortest hours of daylight. Being there are 24 hours of daylight, it really does just seem like one long day. I often forget which day of the week it is. The darkness makes the Christmas lights seem brighter and brings an air of coziness to the brightly lit houses.

During a conversation on the lack of the feeling of Christmas, my friend Bill mentioned that the sound of children was missing. We haven’t heard the laughter, playing, crying, silliness, or innocence that is children in over 2 months. In his normal life, Bill would hang out with his nieces and nephews on a weekly basis. I realized that this was it for me! The reason a Christmas feeling was missing. The excited and wide eyed children remind us that Christmas means happiness, innocence and hope; a new beginning. Children allow us to become children again, revisiting memories and gaining shear joy from giving.

The day before Christmas Eve, my friend, Stacia, reserved one of the movie lounges and played Peter, Paul, and Mary’s Christmas Concert special. As cheesy and nerdy as it sounds, I knew this would be the one thing that I could do for myself that would make my Christmas. Before seat belts and car seats were determined to be important, my mom would rock each of us to sleep as we drove long distances in the dark North Dakota winter as she would sing Peter, Paul, and Mary songs. All you would see is the snow drifting across the road shining in the headlights, hearing the wind and my mom’s singing. I drank my bottle of wine and became nostalgic as the concert special brought back those memories of Christmas past that normally children’s voices do. That was my Christmas. That was when I felt like Christmas.

Today the South Pole web cam will be directly pointed at 90 degrees South and capture a traditional flag rising for POW/MIA and the Race Around the World. It will be up from 8 am – 12 pm (2 pm – 6 pm CST). http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spwebcam.cfm