Christmas Celebrations

I love Christmas.

This whole month has felt very festive here in Inuvik, something about the snow and the Christmas lights up around town getting 20hrs of display time a day....

And there's been lots to keep us busy.

There was a community Christmas concert at the Igloo church last weekend that was a mix of a school concert and a small-town church choir performance - the expected varying quality of voices but good fun had by all! It went on for about 2 hours... also reminiscent of school Christmas concerts in days gone by, but it was really amazing to see so many people from all parts of the community (and surrounding communities even) gather in one place. My favourite part was that the middle-aged lady who was emceeing the night broke up the performances by telling stories of her past as the next group set up. She told of her earliest Christmas memories, growing up on the land outside of the fishing village of Tsiigehtchic, her mother working all fall to sew new mitts and parkas for the family for Christmas, and all the families in the area coming to the town for the Christmas Eve mass at the church, where all the women would parade their new parkas in like a fashion show. She also talked of a Christmas a few years later, by which time all the families were settled in the town, when the Salvation Army air-dropped a box of toys from a plane flying overhead, to give to the children of the village for Christmas. It was like a peek back into the not-too-distant history of our land. Can you even call it history when people are still living out the consequences, good and bad, of those times?

The Christmas Concert at the Igloo Church

It's also been feeling a lot like Christmas having packages and cards arrive in our mailboxes every few days from amazing family and friends! One day we had three packages all arrive at once ... full of food and decorations, enough to cover our kitchen table with a festive spread! Also, Adam had ordered moccasins from a lady at the craft fair but had to have them specially made as she didn't have his size. So she mailed them up to him, and they arrived on the same day as the care packages! Amazing belated birthday treat for him. They are incredibly soft beaver fur with moosehide bottoms - you can see them in the top left of the photo:

Table full of Christmas gifts, all arrived on the same day!

But it's not really Christmas without a Christmas tree, and this being our first Christmas away from home, we were so excited when a few of the docs here offered to take us out Christmas tree hunting! We headed out in their car on a -35C Saturday afternoon, down the highway away from town. Eventually we pulled off to the side of the road, got out of the car and tramped through the snow into the bush. Apparently as long as you go more than 50m from the road, cutting down trees is fair game. All the trees here are black spuce, which are pretty spindly at the best of times, and we are pretty close to the northern limit of their habitat, so the pickings were fairly slim if you wanted a tall tree. But we found a perfect little baby tree that looked much more proportional, and could be safely smuggled into our little residence apartment. (I'm betting this little four-footer is still over 50 years old - we will count the rings when we take it down!)

Adam and Robin cutting down our tree

Three saw-strokes later... got it!

Christmas tree!

Putting it on the car

Feeling festive, and very frosty

Our little Christmas tree in our living room - thank you for all the gifts and cards!!!

We are lucky to have the next 5 days off of work, and will be trying to stay out of the hospital as much as possible. Our next adventure, we hope, will be taking the Ice Road (which has just opened) on the Mackenzie River up to Tuktoyaktuk... stay tuned!