A Northern Christmas

The sun starts to tinge the sky around 8:00 AM, although today, Christmas Day, it won't fully push through night's gloom until half past nine. That's the official sunrise, but in our small corner of town, we never really get to see the sun since the hills block it out as it transits low across the horizon, too low to get above the ridge line of ancient pre-Cambrian rock flanking us to the south and west.

But it has all the makings of a glorious day: cloudless, windless and a bearable (pardon the pun) minus 16 C.

It has been far too long since I last posted here, and to get back into the swing of things, I propose to give you (probably the singular you of my readership who is left) a taste of what Christmas is like about 300 kilometers north of the treeline in Arctic Quebec. A word of advice, though. Christmas in Nunavik is a period, not a day. And while it starts on December 25th, Christmas ends well after New Years, with an innumerable amount of church services, feasts, radio broadcasts and games (both indoor and out). So by posting quite regularly over the next 12 days or so, I hope to involve you, albeit vicariously, in my Christmas experience.

Merry Christmas!

Your faithful Nanuk