my christmas, part 2

Plenty of you have asked what Christmas brings to Antarctica. Or perhaps, the question should be what Antarctica brings to Christmas. Despite being part of a community made of multifarious dilettantes (1/2 of whom indifferently consider the Christ of Christmas to be irrelevant or non-existent), Christmas is an amazing holiday to be spent on the coldest continent. There is next to no consumerism, there are no long holiday lines, or traffic jams; no parades or materialistic parties. It's just Christmas. It comes upon us very quickly and is an amazing time to spend with friends, good food, and a couple of days off.

Our Christmas' are typically not white, but brown. It's summer here and most of our snow and ice has melted; although, the day after Christmas, we did have a lovely refreshing snowfall. It makes everything appear clean and new again.

December 23, I got off work 1/2 hour early since our flights were in and things were under control. Our department closed for TWO whole NO-FLY days.

That evening, I went to the Christmas Party (lots of fun) and sang in the Christmas choir (also fun). The party transforms the VMF (Vehicle Maintenance Facility) and provides good hors d'evours, good people, and nice decorations. I talked with lots of people before heading to bed late and rising again at 5am when my alarm went off so I could work at the Coffee House. I covered my shift; a very quiet (nearly boring) morning as most people were sleeping in after the town party.

About the time I woke up my shuttles roommates got a call that there was a Pole medevac. They had to drive a couple transports out to the airfield for a LC-130 to fly down there and back.

Later in the morning, I volunteered in the dish room for a little over an hour before I took a shower and cleaned up for Christmas dinner which I had at 15:00. I ate with J and Lucas; two of my best friends down here. It was a wonderful meal: roasted duck, king crab legs, and beef wellington. Wow! What we miss in family over the holidays our food services staff tries to make up in food. But, of course, it certainly isn't quite the same as being at home for Christmas.

It was really good that I ate at 3pm because I was just about to take a nap and my senior, Susie, who covered the Pole medevac in the morning asked me to go to work to cover the Christchurch leg of this flight tonight. So, I manifested a medevac flight. There was a fight and the one guy got punched in the face and apparently fell down some stairs, breaking his jaw bad enough that it couldn't be fixed here. I read this appropriate verse last evening: Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise. -- Proverbs 20:1 --

After that excitement, I headed to the chapel where we had a Christmas Carols. I sang a duet of O Holy Night with Martin. It turned out pretty well. Singing old favorite Christmas carols with light still streaming through the windows with a full chapel put the meaning into remembering the night of Christ's birth.

The next day was a day to simply enjoy Christmas. I spent a lot of lazy time enjoying a Christmas morning brunch. In the afternoon, our holiday choir sang over the HF radio to the South Pole and some of our field camps. We also laughed that some random truck driver in Yemen might also have picked up our signal! We had a wonderful time singing at MacOps and the South Pole even came up with their own impromptu choir to sing back to us.

My holiday was the way it should be. I remembered, rested, and celebrated.

Photos (from top down): 1) J & myself at the "bottom of the world," 2) Dennis with me in front of the abominable snowman, 3) Lucas, myself, and J after our enjoyable Christmas dinner, 4) my roommate, Char, and I at the Christmas party, 5) the HF radio handset that we sung over at MacOps.