Hosie and Ringo sitting together during Christmas dinner. Note the Christmas light necklace that Ringo’s sister, Ellen, got him. We all loved the necklace, Ellen! And the lights worked perfectly inside the tent!

Hey friends! Today was Christmas here in Davis-Ward and what a Christmas it was! We had a late start as the last of that snow storm cleared out. It was nothing too shabby! Just enough to give our camp the white Christmas cheer that we needed! Everyone woke up to garland decorated tents and sleigh bells on their skidoos for Christmas! Santa came to Davis-Ward! Our resupply flight got postponed due to the weather this morning but it’ll come – sooner or later.
We went out to a large moraine today to both collect and hunt for meteorites. We came back to camp with a whopping 54 giving us a grand total of… drumroll… 176! Not too bad for all of the tent days and bad weather we’ve been having here. We also came back to camp early to prepare our Christmas feast. Elena and I made bacon wrapped scallops. Brian and Jim made a pork loin with a camp version of a reduction sauce. John and Paul made sweet potato casserole. And Hosie and Ringo made some incredible meatballs covered in what Hosie called “a classic Midwest sauce.” Something along the lines of BBQ sauce and grape jam. It was all amazing. We crammed into the Science tent and ate to our hearts content. It was a little crowded during dinner so after, we took our dishes back to our tents and gathered our presents before reconvening at the Science Tent. One by one, we exchanged presents and it was really such a magical night. It’s incredible that less than a month ago, we were virtually strangers. And here we are, on ANSMET Christmas, exchanging presents and enjoying the holiday like one big happy family. Today is also Jim’s birthday… but the team has collectively decided to postpone it considering he postponed Christmas!
A spectacular way to spend Christmas… with new friends on the most remote continent. Today, I felt incredibly lucky and I can only imagine the others did too.
Until next time,

-Sheridan

P.S. In addition to reading about the adventures of Shackleton, Admundsen, and Scott, we are also playing trivia every night thanks to Mrs. Sandy Hynek, Hosie’s mom. Sandy – to ration out the 365 trivia calendar, we’ve been playing 11 a day. Our top score was 4.5 until today when it was a whopping ‪6/11‬ points!! There’s got to be something about the magic of Christmas!! Thank you so much for giving us the gift of trivia out here. It’s something the entire team enjoys! Big thanks to you, Sandy!

P.P.S. Because Ralph censored us and took the word “turd” out of our Night Before Christmas Blog (the original line was “In hopes that a turd soon would be there”), we have officially renamed our team to The Unbelievable Real Deal… aka TURD.

-Defensive note from editor rph:  I thought the poem was great (I read it while waiting for Christmas Eve services to begin) and a fine example of how a bit of isolation can bring out the expressive side of ANSMET volunteers.  But I also found that one word jarring, so replaced it with a euphemism.  Frankly I think I am the height of editorial discretion by not removing any of the dozen extra exclamation points.