Christmas at South Pole a unique event

No doubt about it: I am definitely having a white Christmas this year. That much was a given.

Despite the guarantee of white, we at the South Pole hardly ever get to see snow fall from the skies. For most of the year, it’s too cold for it to snow. Our blankets of white pile up regularly from crystallization, and snowdrift snow from the coast blows across the entire continent, daily challenging our small fleet of bulldozers to keep the station clear. But for Christmas, it actually has grown warm enough for snowfall; small, dry flakes, but definitely snow. That’s Mother Nature’s Christmas gift to us.

It’s not the only present falling from the skies. Five days before Christmas, we had our second annual airdrop of supplies. Everyone headed out to the edge of the station to watch the C-17 aircraft drop two dozen crates, each equipped with a parachute. The atmosphere was festive and excited as I rode out on a snowmobile-towed cargo sled to watch our “Christmas presents” of supplies make an aerial landing. Once all of the cargo had been dropped, the C-17 made a final pass over our group, waggling its wings in a “Merry Christmas” gesture before heading back to the Antarctic coast.

While we may have snow – and packages – literally falling from the skies, Christmas here is still very different from Christmas at home. I won’t be driving through Bangor to look at the lights with my sister this year; and, were we to string our Jamesway buildings with lights, it would never get dark enough to see them. Neither do we have a real tree – no scent of pine or spruce or fir wafts in the South Pole air, a place too inhospitable for plant life.

But we still make Christmas happen here, full and festive; it’s just Christmas South Pole-style. To augment our few artificial trees, station doctor Pat McGuire painted several trees and put them up on the walls around the station, inviting us to decorate them with pictures of our families and friends back home.

As part of our culinary Christmas preparation, the making and decorating of gingerbread houses was in order. “Houses,” however, are not part of our South Pole Station reality, so the baker made a beautiful gingerbread Jamesway. That’s Christmas South Pole-style.

One Polie decided that although his children were far away in the United States, he still could read out loud – to us! Three nights before Christmas, many of us curled up on couches and listened as he read “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” There is an importance in maintaining tradition, wherever you are, something we all found comforting.

Christmas services were held several days early, while the weather was stable enough for a chaplain from McMurdo to fly in and hold religious celebrations. High altitude makes it harder to sing carols, but we did so with gusto nonetheless.

Perhaps the Christmas spirit came out the most, though, in the form of our special Christmas guests. On the morning of Christmas Eve, the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition traverse rolled into the South Pole. Its arrival marked the end of a long, continuing project that is a collaboration among many nations, chief among them students and researchers from, believe it or not, our own University of Maine.

The group of a dozen individuals – including Paul Mayewski, Sharon Sneed, Gordon Hamilton, Ben Dixon, Dan Breton, Nicky Spalding, Elana Krotokh and others affiliated with the University of Maine – had been making their way slowly toward the South Pole from Byrd Glacier since late October. After 1,200 miles this season, they arrived just in time for our Christmas feast. The holiday feeling was magnified as we shared it with the triumphant and safe end of a long journey.

The ITASE traverse’s arrival marked the end of a six-season, 8,000-mile project. The research caravan consisted of sled-mounted hypertats (similar to Jamesways) pulled by bulldozers and piston bullies, resembling a heavy-machinery wagon train. Imagine what it must have been like for them to see their first settlement in more than a month, arriving at last at the South Pole on Christmas Eve.

I’m sure that Christmas dinner made the trip worth it. Volunteers peeled piles of potatoes to make real mashed potatoes, rather than the customary instant ones. And for a further – and more incredible – taste of home, our Christmas feast also included real Maine lobster. I’m sure the Mainers on the ITASE traverse were not expecting to find that.

As we eat our real mashed potatoes and decorate our homemade trees with photographs, I can bet that many of our thoughts turned to Christmases and loved ones back home. Yet most of us are content in our South Pole Christmas, which, like the gingerbread Jamesway, might look different, but is still wonderfully Christmas: a bright, sunny and very white Christmas. Let it snow!

Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, is working in Antarctica. Watch for accounts of her Antarctic experiences each Friday. For more about her adventure, information about Antarctica and to e-mail questions to her, go to bangordailynews.com.