My White Christmas at the South Pole

It's Christmas Day here at the South Pole but it doesn’t feel anything like it even if I am gazing upon the dreamiest, most pristine white landscape imaginable. I’ve not tired of that beauty. Indoors, the stewards have decorated the already tatty lounges and galley with plastic Christmas trees, paper snowflakes and various kitschy deco that does very little to put me in the mood. I’ll be happy to see it gone.

It's 3 AM and I’m in the galley—otherwise known as Cree’s office—drinking coffee, keeping to my graveyard sleep cycle after a much-needed nap. The leftover penguin sugar cookie is going down nicely with the watery coffee. The cookie puts me in mind of Cherry who writes that he and the crew of the Terra Nova expedition, on their initial Christmas in 1911, had a most pleasant meal of fresh mutton and penguin. You’d definitely go to jail—where I have no idea—for killing and eating a penguin today.

The details that stick with me from reading Shackleton, Scott and, of course, Cherry, are the descriptions of the men hoarding some little delicacy and then presenting to the group on Christmas day. Often it’s a nip of brandy, enough tobacco to fill a pipe or a nibble of chocolate. It was another case when Shackleton and his crew abandoned the Endurance in 1915; they took what they could carry and ate the rest. As Shackleton writes in South, “December 22 was kept as Christmas Day, and most of our small remaining stock of luxuries was consumed at the Christmas feast…Anchovies in oil, baked beans and jugged hare made a glorious mixture such as we have not dreamed of since our schooldays.” (Jugged hare is just that—rabbit preserved in a vessel.)

Here, the overindulgence of the Christmas feast yesterday continues into the morning hours as rowdy groups wander through the otherwise quiet galley, foraging for a snack as ballast before bed. There were 136 people on station for Christmas this year—until the SPOT (South Pole Overland Transport) team of five bearded, rugged men showed up just in time for the Christmas meal. (They were truly just in time—the last ones through the line.) Upon entry they received a standing ovation, filled their plates and then sat down with several bottles of wine and a full bottle of whiskey to celebrate. They earned it after spending the past three weeks driving heavy equipment 600 miles from McMurdo Station to here. (Each man drives his own Caterpillar tractor pulling what amounts to a trailer or shipping container—or a fuel tank.)

There are two SPOT teams to deliver supplies and remove waste from the South Pole: one mostly transports food and fuel and the other carries scientific equipment. The regular team has come and gone—leaving behind nearly half the fuel oil from for the coming year and taking away a whole lot of garbage. They’ll make another trip before the summer ends in late February.

I imagined that I’d be isolated here—a sort of mini version of winter. Not at all. Flights come and go, depending on weather and the mechanical condition of the aging Hercules C-130s. Sometimes it’s NSF scientists, workers that have been delayed, or borrowed labor from McMurdo. The Pole, it seems, is desperate for carpenters and plumbers and electricians.

I also didn’t’ expect to see are tourists right outside the window. I am sorry to report—or am I?—that they are widely disdained on station. It’s too easy to mock people who spend upwards of 100K for an overnight at the Pole. I imagine them, as I stare at out at their camp, asleep under puffy duvets having gorged themselves on crisp romaine salad, rare porterhouses and copious quantities of well-aged Bordeaux. This may be mere fantasy but I can’t imagine they aren’t pampered at that price. (Far distant right is the tourist camp, as seen from the galley window.)

We aren’t allowed to interact with these alien arrivals who emerge from their chartered ski plane to disturb our treasured notion that we are here alone, at the end of the world. When they land anyone who happens to be in the galley, as I often am, stands at the window and gawks, as if the bundled figures snapping selfies are exotic wildlife, not wealthy Chinese, American, Japanese and European sightseers.

Per NSF Covid protocols, if they tour the station—as some occasionally do—they are fully masked. There are no tours on Sunday given the unflattering detritus of empty beer cans, booze and wine bottles littering the lounges. The NSF is sensitive to appearances even if they’re fully aware of precisely how much drinking goes on here.

Each Friday those who are thirsty bundle up in their Big Reds to march to the “booze barn,” a hut not far from the main station. There they spend their rations—we’re allotted a certain number of points per week that can be used to buy, for example, a 750 ml bottle of Jack Daniels, Bacardi or Captain Morgan (the selection isn’t great). You can also spend your points on beer and wine. Logically, the number of points an item “costs” depends on the percentage of alcohol. I used my first points the other day for a bottle of white Bacardi to douse a Christmas cake.

That booze soaked butter cake was consumed on Christmas Eve along with all the other items I made over the course of the past ten days. (I added the last of the rum to a carton of egg nog that had been frozen since 2021. Oh well!) This year’s menu consisted of duck breast with blueberry sauce, leg of lamb, squash and carrot soup, a vegetarian puff pastry concoction, Brussels sprouts and various “salads”—did you know you can make a salad of frozen broccoli? (It was tasty! This may be more an indication of my diminished standards than genuine success.)

My contribution to the meal, naturally, were the desserts plus Yorkshire pudding and dinner rolls. Other than the rum cake, I made a a Concorde cake which is a meringue and mousse Lenôtre specialty (named in the 1970s for the super-speedy airplane), a cranberry-frangipane tart, a pistachio torte, and steamed sticky toffee buns. I also made chocolate truffles, mini-brownie trees, hermits bars that I covered with royal icing and called Christmas squares, those frosted sugar cookie penguins, chocolate-peppermint cookies and mini-chocolate cookie cups filled with mocha mousse. Everything worked out except the Concorde cake which kind of turned to mush when I cut it—I called it my cake of shame even though it was delicious.

I’m acutely aware, sitting here alone in the galley, that it’s Christmas Eve back at home in New York City. My family will be gathering this evening over an eclectic mix of homemade eggnog, champagne, caviar (grade depending on finances), Nova, latkes, and a cookie spread. Cocktails by Penn, baking by Hattie, Dwight hosting and Maebelle, the dog, playing princess. As I tuck into an early morning bowl of ramen to chase my coffee I think of Shackleton. “On the 25th, a breakfast of sledging rations was served,” he writes. “We wished one another merry Christmas, and our thoughts went back to those at home.” Indeed

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