Holiday Countdown: December 6th

Arctic Christmas

When you are in an unfamiliar place you can still find some friendly faces during the holidays! Mr. Finnie found a great deal of fun in an unusual way when he spent Christmas Day in the Arctic.

Preconceived ideas about chilly cheerless Christmases near the North Pole were all wrong. Mr. Finnie found a great deal of fun of an unusual sort when he spent a Christmas Day at Coppermine, Northwest Territories.

WITH compassion welling up in my little breast I read somewhere in my early youth that dwellers in the Arctic, unable because of their unfortunate environment to prepare for Christmas in an orthodox manner, compromised by fashioning a tree out of whalebone and hanging on it blubber bon-bons. These were distributed to the fur-clad children, who munched them with an enjoyment 1 was sure I could never share. All the polar clan then joined shiveringly in the singing of carols and spent the rest of the day in their ice-houses, wrapped in bearskins to keep from freezing to death.

Image right: The author's headquarters at Coppermine. It was here that the Eskimos heard themselves adressed in their own language from the loudspeaker.

Santa Claus, though residing in the vicinity, was too busy delivering presents in more southerly climes to bother leaving any for his neighbours. All in all they had a pretty hard time of it, and I felt sorry for them indeed. Much less doubting the accuracy of this picture, 1 never entertained the possibility that within a few years I would find out just how they really did celebrate Christmas—through the expedient of spending a Christmas with them myself.

As special investigator for the Canadian government I was making my winter headquarters at the little settlement of Coppermine, Coronation Gulf, on the Arctic coast midway between Hudson Bay and Alaska. Strung out along the bleak shore were a half dozen frame houses of imported lumber, belonging respectively to the Roman Catholic and Anglican missions, the Hudson’s Bay Company,the government medical depot and the wireless station.

It was the 20th of December and the inhabitants, numbering less than a dozen white men, were preoccupied with thoughts of Christmas—not so much for what it was going to mean to them now, perhaps, as to what it had meant in the past in company with friends and relatives thousands of miles away. But there was little time for sentimentalizing as, in addition to routine tasks, preparations had yet to be made for the reception of visitors. Scores of Eskimo families from the islands to the north, from capes and bays on the coast and from seal-hunting camps on the frozen sea, were known to be on their way to the settlement to hold a yule-tide reunion. Until a few years ago, of course, these people had no knowledge of Christmas, and in fact they had no precise means of reckoning time whereby they could arrange to foregather on an appointed date. The influence of the white men had altered this situation. Nearly every Eskimo family now had a calendar upon which each day was carefully marked off; and they were aware, at least in one respect, of the significance of Christmas—it was a day of feasting and merrymaking for the whites, in which they too might join. And so they were en route to coppermine, their dogs straining at the traces of sleds piled high with all manner of household goods, furs, seal oil and meat. While the adults broke trail and helped in harness with the dogs, the children rode on the sleds or pattered gaily alongside.

Meanwhile the two rival missions were making ready their special supplies of biscuits, jam and tea and other dainties with which they hoped to entice the natives to masses and services. The trading post manager was taking an inventory of his goods and getting the store in shape to do business. At the medical depot the doctor, a slightly homesick young Scotsman, was concerned in his yule-tide preparations neither with soul saving nor trade; he was merely determined to maintain the traditions of his race as well as circumstances permitted. First of all, he wanted a Christmas tree. Such a thing had never been seen on the barren coast of Coronation Gulf, but that did not deter him. He dispatched a native servant with sled and dog team, instructing him to proceed inland to the northern limit of wooded country, there to cut a spruce tree and bring it back to the settlement. The previous winter the doctor had ordered, through the Hudson’s Bay Company, a collection of toys and candy, which had subsequently been delivered in the open season by the annual supply ship. These he brought down from the attic and unpacked. On the following day the native arrived from a non-stop trip to the interior. The tree he had picked out was symmetrical and of just the right height, and it became an object of amused curiosity when the doctor had got it set up in the living room and decorated with glass balls, festoons and candles.

Over at the wireless station, when not sending out weather reports to civilization, the operators baked batches of bread and undertook mysterious culinary experiments. They had issued a general invitation to the white colony for Christmas dinner.

Image right: Broadcasting on Christmas Day from radio station VBK. The author is on the right. 

By the 24th nearly two hundred Copper Eskimos—men, women and children—had assembled at the settlement. None of us had seen so many people at once for a long time. Aside from differences in speech and costume and equipage, they might have been delegates to a convention. Theirs was a spirit of good-fellowship; they joked and laughed and sang. In this case, however, despite the absence of hotels, there was no accommodation problem to deal with. While the women unloaded the sleds the men set to work on the fringe of the sea-ice cutting blocks from the wind-packed snow and constructing commodious igloos. And contrary to my storybook information, all these were of snow, not ice.

It required but an hour or two to finish the igloos and furnish them with deerskin bedding, numerous knick-knacks and the stone seal-oil lamps which served a three-fold purpose—heat, light and cooking. The Eskimos then started, according to a custom they had developed, to go the rounds of all the white men’s dwellings, staying at each one long enough to negotiate a feed of hard-tack and tea. To the Hudson’s Bay Company’s store the hunters brought their fox pelts—whites, crosses, silvers and reds—which they had accumulated since freeze-up. The post manager, good-humoured and patient, allowed his customers to deliberate as much as they wished over the choosing of goods, but diplomatically tried to discourage purchases of golf sweaters, novelty jewelry, silk underwear and the like, recommending instead food, tools and ammunition as being more useful. Easily exploited by the unscrupulous, the Eskimos, though intelligent, are often child-like and unpractical.

Their trading finished, some of the Eskimos wound up at the wire-less station. Having been in operation for only a few months, this was a source of wonderment to the visitors who were not habitues of the settlement. The big gasoline driven generators that started and stopped at the turn of a switch evoked gasps of admiration. But the chief attraction was the electric lights. How, asked the Eskimos, was it possible to build within glass bottles a fire that could be lit or extinguished without being touched? Common sense explanations were waved aside. It was quite obvious that this was a specimen of the white men’s witch-craft, which, though different, was really not so remarkable as the feats of Eskimo medicine-men. Who could see through a mountain or fly to the moon.

Hoping to arrange a “miracle" that would impress our guests more favourably, I went into a hasty conference with the wireless operators and a sophisticated western Eskimo who was sometimes employed as interpreter. Then I adjourned to my own quarters, followed by a crowd of Eskimos, whom I instructed to listen carefully as the radio receiving set was switched on. A popular dance tune blasted forth. This was not out of the ordinary: to them it was a phonograph, a queer contrivance that sometimes talked, but only in an incomprehensible language. They waited politely and shuffled their feet. Suddenly the music stopped. It was replaced with a voice which said: “Hello Aivik.Hello Keenuktuk. Hello Ikpuck-huak . . .” Everyone in the room was called by name. Well, here was something worthy of attention—a phonograph that spoke intelligibly! The Eskimos exchanged startled glances. The voice addressed them in their own tongue, explaining that its owner was right in the room with them but defied them to find him. A little diffidently some of the Eskimos peered into the horn, others opened the radio cabinet and still others looked under the table. One of them, a discerning young fellow, at last exclaimed: “Oh, 1 know who was speaking to us. It is Aviuk the westerner. He is trying to fool us. Over at the other house the white men are sending out his voice by means of the magic wires, which is being caught in this horn.”

Leaving the room, the youth raced to the wireless station to confirm his theory, and returned wearing a broad grin. He told his fellows what he had seen. They all laughed heartily. Disclosure of the fact of their having been able to identify the voice of Aviuk coming from the loudspeaker while the man himself was a quarter of a mile away did not overawe the Eskimos in the slightest degree. That was just more parlour magic. On the other hand they had found out that Aviuk was in one place when he claimed to be in another. All of which, according to the native logic, constituted an expose of our miracle. So the joke was on us.

It was Christmas day. The trading post apprentice had been prevailed upon to masquerade as Santa Claus. When the guests had all arrived at the medical depot he made his entrance wearing a false beard and a conventional Santa Claus costume of scarlet flannel. The children screamed with fright, while the men and women drew back shyly to make way for this peculiarly accoutred stranger. They had been told that a benevolent white man who lived at the North Pole was to pay a call, but this man, they felt, could hardly be he. Why, he was not even wearing furs, though the temperature was forty degrees below zero, and his boots were not of moose-skin ! This was not the proper attire for a dweller in the Far North. The impersonation lasted for only a few minutes. Then the apprentice’s beard half fell off and his face was recognized amid shouts of merriment. Undaunted, he began handing out the gifts: raisins and candy to everybody, pocket-knives to the boys and, of all things, handkerchiefs to the girls. This was the doctor’s idea of a joke. Eskimos have already adopted some of the niceties of civilization, but if a time comes when they start using handkerchiefs it will symbolize an utter loss of self-respect!









                                                           

A few of the whites who had come to ridicule the doctor's Christmas party (they thought it would be absurd) were shortly captured by the spirit of revelry. Each of them persuaded a raven-haired fur-clad damsel to try a fox-trot with him as the radio was tuned to a static-free dance programme from New York. The younger women, and even some of the more matronly ones carrying babies on their backs, seemed to have a sense of rhythm quite equal to that of any metropolitan debutante. An example having been set, the native men themselves were soon fox-trotting, executing a variety of steps that were original if not always graceful. And as they were all wearing moccasins it really didn't matter if one trod on his partner’s toes now and then.

The thought flashed across my mind that here was an anachronistic situation. Through the witchery of science a group of people who literally belonged to the stone age were dancing to the latest Broadway tune, yet somehow there was little inappropriateness about it; it was rendered aesthetic by the basic primitiveness of American jazz, and the Eskimos took to it naturally and with evident enjoyment.

At five p.m. when we entered the wireless station our nostrils were assailed by a conglomeration of appetizing odours. It had been rumoured that the dinner was to be of exotic character, but no details had been learned. Menus were now given out, and listed thereon were potage ptarmigan, filet of Arctic salmon, fried white fox and Greenland hare a la king, roast snowy owl and giblets of seal, caribou steak, canned vegetables and plum pudding. “We should consider ourselves especially privileged,” someone remarked. “What swell restaurant anywhere in the world could duplicate this assortment ?” The meal progressed splendidly until the final course, when the doctor ruefully directed attention to the absence of brandy to burn on the pudding. Astonished eyes were fixed upon him, for he was known to be an ardent prohibitionist. “Well, what can we do about it?” he was asked. "So far as we know, there isn’t a drop of anything stronger than ice-water around Coronation Gulf. But if there were, we'd have located it.”

“You can fool some of the people some of the time,” he replied with a grin. “I should like to have every detail of this banquet as much as possible in keeping with old-country traditions. I have a bottle of brandy cached away. I’ll fetch it.”

He dashed out of doors amid chorused exclamations of: “So he’s got a bottle of brandy!” “I hope it’s a big one!” “Maybe it’s going to be a merry Christmas after all.

A few minutes afterward the doctor reappeared flourishing a two-ounce bottle of the precious fluid, which he promptly emptied over the pudding and ignited. The ensuing period of glum silence was interrupted by one of the operators, who produced a microphone, set it on the table and announced: “This is radio station VBK, in the heart of the Arctic. Greetings to all missionaries and trappers, trading posts and Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachments. You are about to hear the entertainment features of the first Christmas dinner ever to be broadcast from north of the Arctic Circle.”

The chief operator could play a guitar. His assistant was a wizard with a harmonica. To their accompaniment we sang popular songs, interspersing them with localized jokes and personal messages to acquaintances at the handful of outposts scattered along the coast. Though the microphone served as an excellent inspiration for our witticisms, we scarcely expected that the impromptu programme would be picked up at any great distance, if at all, as the telephone transmitter was low powered. It was therefore with considerable surprise that we later received acknowledgments from almost every corner of the Canadian Arctic.

Just as VBK was signing off one of the Eskimos brought word that a native dance was being held in the visitors’ camp, and that we might attend if we cared to. Believing it would provide a striking contrast to our own festivities, we made our way toward the cluster of dome-shaped structures dotting the shore line. Yellow light from the seal-oil lamps shone cheerily through the ice windows, and as we drew nearer we could hear the weird throbbing of a drum.

Gathered in an enormous igloo, the men and women began the ceremony by forming a circle and humming softly while one of their number stepped into the centre and thumped a drum to test its pitch. (The Eskimos’ only musical instrument is a light wooden hoop over which caribou skin is tightly stretched.) Holding it by a short handle, the performer dexterously swung it from side to side against a club in his other hand as he danced and sang. The dance had no set form, but was often the pantomimic complement of the songs. Some of the songs were composed on the spot, others seemed to be well known to nearly everybody. The themes dealt with simple incidents in the lives of the people or extolled the prowess of this or that hunter. When not taking turns with the drum the participants kept in a ring and chanted the choruses.

Though we could understand hardly a word of the songs, the spectacle held us enthralled for several hours. There was something mysterious and compelling in its monotonous simplicity and rhythm. Aware that this dance had been presented in much the same way for thousands of years, we soberly reflected that in a little while hence it would probably disappear, swallowed up by the white man’s invading culture.

The igloos were abandoned the next day; the natives packed all their belongings on their sleds and, with staccato commands to the teams ringing out in the crisp air, they drove off into the distance. The settlement was left quiet and forlorn.

I pondered over the tales I had read in my childhood of the celebration of Christmas in the Far North. How different was the scene they had conjured up from that in which I had taken part! In addition to being factually misleading, those stories had created a wrong atmosphere; they had made me think of the Arctic as an eternally frigid and forbidding region where no one could ever be really happy or comfortable. But ultimately I had discovered that the Arctic can be just as congenial as any other section of the globe—and especially at Christmas time.

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