Peace on Earth? Not so fast.





Medical team with Santa at VMF party
Conditions:  Temperature 35. Sunny (24 hours a day).  Population = 816

The holidays are a huge deal at McMurdo.  There are only two times when we get two days off in a row.  Christmas (12/24 and 12/25)  and New Years (12/31 and 1/1).

I've told you already that Hanukkah is pretty much a dud.  We have a menorah in the galley that was beautifully engineered by the machine shop a few years ago.  It has been unceremoniously placed on a table next to a fire extinguisher and adjacent to a second table where someone is required to sit, watching the candles for as long as they burn.  I guess after 2000 years, the Christian world still thinks the Jews will burn down the place if given the chance.  Over the first three nights, four Jews have attended the candle lighting with an occasional one or two others--Dean usually-- looking on.  The whole little ceremony does not feel celebratory.  In fact, it's kind of depressing. Not a latke or doughnut in sight!  But I'm grateful for the tablecloth sent by my cousins, Eric and Rona, that adds a little cheer.
Menorah with its daytime electric candles.

The night of the 12/23, the Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF) threw their annual party in the vehicle garage. The VMF crew decorated the garage with posters, homemade Xmas ornaments, inflatable penguins and even a strange inflatable monster, that looked like Zuul in Ghostbusters. Santa sat on pistenbully with his elves, all over 6 feet tall, guiding groups up for photos.  A bar and dance floor with a DJ playing loud music was adjacent to a sitting area with a a slide show of people's pets.  After admiring pictures of Raven and Thunder, Dean and I chose to hang out in the acoustic music room,, a garage space with low lighting, a styrofoam Santa, shabby couches, and fantastic music.  There is a surprising amount of talent among the 816 people currently here.  The guy we listened to for quite a while was a terrific Woody Guthrie-esque country singer with guitar and harmonica.   My favorite song?  "Honey, Lay Your Pistol Down".  Somehow appropriate for Dean and me.



We arrived at 8 PM and left around 10 PM to the same brilliant sunshine.   At 1 AM, a brawl broke out between Air Force and Army vets.   Two people, I'm sure, will be sent off the ice.  Then, at around 5 AM, a guy who had imbibed twenty (yes, twenty) beers, decided that God was against him. He tried to destroy the Chapel of the Snows, overturning the altar, breaking the cross and  shattering a stained glass window.  He was brought to clinic for a psych eval soon thereafter.  He had a doleful tale:  unexpected deaths of mother and a brother over the last few months and crippling insomnia.  I'm sure NSF will ship him off on the next plane, when it ever arrives, probably to jail for destruction of government property. Sad, sad start to the two day holiday.

The Chapel of the Snows 


Dean went to Christmas Eve services at the Chapel just 14 hours after the destruction and said the carpenters had done a terrific job putting things back together.  But it's all for naught.  The chapel--which is quite charming in a shabby chic way--will soon be torn down by NSF as part of the plan for the new base.  But The Chapel of the Snows will I'm sure, somehow, rise again from the ashes.  It has, after all, burned down twice before.   And no, it wasn't because of Hanukkah candles.

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