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Merry Christmas everyone!

This is supposed to be Stan's "normal" homepage for various work and play things, but for the moment we're hijacking it to bring you Stan's "generic" holiday letter. As you can see, it's been an interesting year.

My life, the short generic version:

I really never stopped traveling since last February when I left Antarctica, so arriving in McMurdo mid-October felt like coming home after a long trip. There is that sense of relief just to unpack the bags and know I don't have to pick them up for four months. McMurdo's a strange place to feel that way about though, since it can never really be "home," and if home is where the heart is, mine is scattered across continents and oceans at the moment.

I'd already been to Antarctica when I reached McMurdo, having visited Palmer Station first on the Peninsula, which involved taking a boat from Punta Arenas, Chile. It's the smallest of the U.S. Antarctic Program Stations, and famous for its beauty - water, islands, mountains and wildlife. I was most awed to see the sunset and stars come out, since it was my first time ever seeing it get dark in Antarctica.

I've been stressing less and enjoying myself more this season. After three years in this job, I feel very comfortable with it and have less to prove. I'm working with two great people and we're keeping each issue of The Antarctic Sun to a consistent 12 pages, shorter than the last two years average length. That means we're leaving work in time to go to weekend parties. I've found dancing and boxing to be my two great releases of energy and emotion.

I had the great luck to go to a penguin colony for the first time in my time on the Ice. We snowmobiled out to Cape Royds where there is a colony of Adelie penguins and met the larger emperor penguins along the way. A weekend later I skied partway back from the Cape Evans hut along the sea ice, a rare chance to go for miles mostly alone.

My big trip this season was to a camp on the Beardmore Glacier for two nights. The Beardmore was the route Robert Scott took to reach the South Pole. Now it's even more important as a record of earlier history, since some of the best preserved fossils in the world are found in the peaks poking up around the Beardmore. For me, just spending two nights in a tent, surrounded by mountains, glacier and "real Antarctica" was wonderful.

I've done the polar plunge again, twice. Now Christmas is past, the icebreaker is about to start cutting a channel, and the season is half over. I'm trying to decide where to travel for how long on my way home to Mark in Juneau. As most of you know, he's been working for the Web department of the Juneau Empire, which moves him in a direction that interests him. He's also, in his scanty free-time, been putting together Web sites for other people in Antarctica under the name www.icepeople.net.

For now, he says the stability and familiarity of the Empire workplace is good for him. He's also been hired to cover the summer Olympics in Athens in August, which will determine some of our summer plans.

My other plans are to help care for my sister Katherine's baby, due in February, to make another attempt at climbing Mt. Rainier in July (Anyone want to come? I think Andy and David said they are interested.), and to pursue more freelance and personal writing. Though every life has ups and downs, I continue to stop now and then, look at my life, and be amazed that I am really living it.

Christmas, in detail:

About as far from Santa's North Pole workshop as you can get, there's a whole different version of Christmas.

At the South Pole there's plenty of snow, but the only trees are fossilized stumps. No pine scent, no holly. Santa Claus would just blend in with the crowd of people, all dressed in big red parkas with fur-lined hoods. His reindeer would be barred at the borders, illegal under the treaty governing this continent without a nation.

There are no advertisements or holiday specials. No crowds at the mall. No malls at all.

But without children to hang stockings and dream of sugarplums, or Nintendos, what does it matter? Far from family, the workers and researchers consider Christmas a chance to party late, sleep in, and eat a big meal.

Like a sudden flash of color in this otherwise white landscape, a small gesture can go a long way. I remember past Christmases here, when Mark and I sat on our bed, with the shades drawn so the Christmas lights could glow, and opened our stockings slowly to prolong the brief feeling of Christmas.

One of the most memorable Christmas miracles was my second year, when I stopped by the office Christmas morning and found an envelope with just my name and "at the newspaper" written on it. Without an address, to or from, it had clearly been slipped under the door. I opened it and immediately recognized the familiar typing, the way the print slanted across the page and some letters were missed. Somehow Matka had gotten a letter to me, on Christmas, from the other end of the world.

The letter had passed hands, from Matka to a woman she met whose husband or brother was flying down with the New York Air National Guard. He carried it down and gave it to someone who put it under the door on Christmas.

Matka wrote about the garden and fall leaves, simple things so distant they were like messages from another world. I read them over and over, astounded by this little miracle I was holding. If anyone could make that kind of magic, it was Matka, who used to ask what kind of weather we wanted before we visited. Then when that sudden summer storm showered us with warm rain, followed by a lightening display she'd say "Here's the storm you asked for."

This year I tried not to think about Christmas before it came, completely avoided cards and buying presents. Alone this year, with Mark in Juneau, I wanted to delay thinking about the bleak Christmas that might be coming. Two days off could too easily become just two days to feel lonely.

But Christmas came anyway, in its own, upside-down Antarctic way.

We decorated the Antarctic Sun office the day after Thanksgiving, dusting off a tree and bending the branches into shape. The year before I'd found a bag of Christmas ornaments in the "skua" bin, where people put things they don't want, but someone else might. We hung the colored balls from the ceiling and closed the shutters to work in the golden twilight of strands of Christmas lights.

The weekend before Christmas everyone started to get into the holiday mood when the Zim brothers played their versions of holiday carols at the Coffee House. The floor was cushioned with layers of camping pads and people sprawled across it like a human puzzle, legs and arms fitting together. If one person moved the other puzzle pieces repositioned a limb too, changing shape to conform to the new spacing.

"Walking in a Winterland" became "Working in a Desolate Wasteland." "Jingle-bell Rock" was replaced by "Boondoggle Rock." Skippy the reindeer joined Rudolph's crew. Instead of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" it was the "Twelve Days in Christchurch": "On the twelfth day in Christchurch, Raytheon gave to me, 12 days paid vacation, 11 nights at Bailie's (bar), 10 flights to Mactown, 9 dinners at Mai Thai's, 8 hours of internet, 7 days of APO privileges, 6 pairs of tube socks, 5 course flight lunch, 4 a.m. wake up, 3 hour delay, 2 orange bags and $150 Kiwi."

Volunteers decorated gingerbread houses in the kitchen. Some were traditional cottages, with shredded wheat shingles and carefully iced windows. Others showed a warped sense of humor - a crack house with a gingerbread man dead in the front door, red frosting and a silver bullet in his head; a punk house with the anarchy symbol on the side and a gingerbread man vomiting multicolored frosting; gingerbread figures committing lewd acts inside a house with a caved in roof and chaotic swirls of frosting.

For the pre-Christmas party the large tractors and bulldozers were moved out of the heavy shop and its textured metal floor was swabbed down. Inside the cavernous garage, even a few people talking created an echoing cacophony. That night several hundred people danced to punk and rock bands. Beyond the dance floor Santa sat in his plush chair, having his photo taken with all the boys and girls, good or bad. He ended up on the dance floor later, dirty dancing and then in the mosh pit, passed over the heads of the crowd. About then I realized that, strange as it was, this Christmas was fun, too. I danced until 2 a.m.

The next day I went on a short hike with a couple friends. The wind was blowing the snow along the ground so fast if we stood still and looked down we felt like the ground was moving beneath us. Any exposed skin would freeze, so we covered up carefully and walked on. Muffled by fleece and drowned out by the wind, I sang carols to myself. Dinner dress ranged from suits and fancy dresses to clean sweatshirts.

We dined on lobster tails, ratatouille, real mashed potatoes, fresh fruit and salad, pumpkin cheesecake and chocolate yulelog. The conversation ranged from Christmas stories to Turkish bathhouses to topics unfit for children, all interspersed with laughter. And it continued afterward in the Coffee house as we played Pictionary and drank mulled wine. Then there were carols and midnight mass in the Chapel, with people in some pews wearing sunglasses so they wouldn't be blinded by the rays coming through the chapel window.

Christmas Day was leisurely - a few calls home, a late brunch, watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story" in the Coffee House. We didn't open the few presents under our tree and our tiny stockings until almost 5 p.m. It made a pleasant finish to the day, putting gifts in their place - nice, but an afterthought.

Each Christmas is its own holiday. Each Antarctic season a new experience. Each day is a new one. This season I've been learning to relax more and enjoy myself, to seek peace and joy within so that I might do my part to spread it to the world. May you find it in your own lives.

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