Christmas at South Pole

Despite all of my vagabonding, this is actually the first time I've ever spent Christmas away from my family--a definite drawback to what would otherwise be a pretty flawlessly great adventure. For me, the holidays are pretty meaningless without my family around.

But there are definite efforts made at Pole to make the holiday season festive, and it ended up being as nice a Christmas as it possibly could have far from home. There is, for example, a tree made of "junk" out on the berms (storage area).

And, inexplicably, a cardboard cut-out Elvis in one of the lounges that someone added a Santa Hat to.

At the beginning of Christmas week, they set up a "mall Santa" display in front of the station store and recruited a good Santa and a bad Santa to pose for pictures. I had to run down during my dish pit shift so you get to see me in my dish-washing attire.

The next night, there was cookie-decorating in the galley, which was great fun, and satisfyingly colorful.

J. the Baker is a prize-winning gingerbread house maker, and usually at her bakery in Vermont they make enormous, elaborate gingerbread houses at holiday time. This year, without her back in Vermont, they made a South Pole station gingerbread house in her honor. And down here, she made a smaller but extremely intricate and gorgeous gingerbread house for us to appreciate.

And then on Christmas Day, most of the station had a day off and there were lots of festivities. In the morning was the "Race Around the World," a less-than-two-mile loop around the station area that went around the geographic pole so that technically, the racers went through all the time zones on the planet. People were encouraged to wear silly costumes, and they did.

I had to work for the day so couldn't participate but but to see everyone gathering to start from the window of the dining area. There was even a snowmobile pulling a couch. Sounds cushy, but it's better to be running than riding at these temps.

And then in the evening we had a really nice Christmas dinner.

There was lots of great volunteer help in the dish pit all day and especially in the evening, so it was fun rather than a hardship to be working on the holiday. If I couldn't be home, spending Christmas with the South Pole community was a pretty great alternative!