Despite the fact that we only have one extra day off for the Christmas holiday and working in the galley, we actually work on Christmas day, McMurdo did a great job of making the holiday seem special. Similar to Thanksgiving, we had special sit down meals banquet style with all the typical holiday foods and a schmorgus borg of desserts.
People also made gingerbread creations of various McMurdo mainstays like Ivan the Terra bus and Scott Hut/ Observation Hill.
Each of the holidays here is usually paired with a big party (for example, they had Freezing Man - a play on Burning Man - after Thanksgiving)...Christmas has two big parties. One party was a pretty standard Christmas party held at the Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF). It still cracks me up that all these events have to be held at various warehouse/work facilities around station.
They try their hardest to glamourize the buildings, but the tools still lying around along with the cold, openness of the rooms reminds you that you are still in a work space. The VMF party had carrolling, dancing and even pictures with Santa.
Santa of course was on the back of a Hagland (a tracked motor vehicle around town), but they put some festive snowflakes on the wheels.
The other big event held around the Christmas holiday is MAAG (which stands for McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery). Basically they turn the carpentry shop into a large art gallery/ carnival. They build all their amusements themselves and often get quite creative.
They had a giant hamster wheel, a giant see saw, a rocking dinosaur, a mini-submarine, etc. They also had a lot of games/ art inside submitted from various community members throughout the month of December.
I enjoyed the giant light bright board they created using clear, green, and brown tinted beer bottles.
What is great about this time of year, is New Years is just a week away. So I look forward to the next big holiday event which is Ice Stock, a huge outdoor concert/ festival parodying Woodstock to celebrate the New Year.
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