Christmas in Cape Dorset

Christmas break has been wonderful. We have all been having a great time together playing, sledding and spending time with Lily’s buddies. On Christmas Eve morning our three neighbour kids came over to play. The middle girl is a student in Margot’s class. Lily has always enjoyed playing with them outside but this is the first time we have had them to our house. The kids played for a while and then we got into baking. We made almost three dozen cookies and then had a crazy time decorating them. There were chocolate sprinkles and sparkles everywhere! Later in the afternoon Margot and Lily wrapped them up and we delivered packages of cookies to all the families left in our complex (all four of them). The kids all stayed for lunch and then we all headed out for the Santa Clause parade. The great part about being close to the north pole is Santa has time to come for our parade. Santa stands on top of the fire truck and everyone joins into the procession that drives around town. It was really very fun. The neat thing was that most of the kids know Lily, Margot and me so most kids waved and said Hi to us, especially Lily. Then we joined into the parade on our snowmobiles. It was a funny thing to be in a parade with the police, fire truck, numerous vehicles, quads and snowmobiles. Lily thought it was great. She was so excited to meet him while he was giving out candy and oranges after the parade.

After dinner we went to a community event. It featured throat singers, various teenagers competing for cash in traditional Inuit games, and live music (after we left sadly). Margot competed in an event called the stick toss in which over 100 people stood in a large circle and passed a stick around while music was played. When the music stopped, whomever was holding the stick was eliminated. The event was quite heated and very intense as everyone took it seriously. Margot made it to the final four people before she was eliminated. I didn’t last long in the gambling game I joined. The game is played by placing either $5.00 or an item of similar value onto one of the three squares on the floor. We then took turns rolling a die. If you rolled a one, you get eliminated. Sadly, I was eliminated. Lily had a great time playing with all the kids and running about. But boy was she goony by the time we got home. She is usually in bed, asleep by 7:30 pm. She didn’t get to sleep until almost 10 pm! It was fun to participate with others in the community. However, I wasn’t too homesick until I got home from this. I think seeing all the Inuit playing and spending time with their friends and family reminded me what we gave up to come up here.

Christmas day was fun. It took us all day minus time spent sledding, lunch and nap opening half Lily and our presents. Every one she opened she had to play with for a while. It was so fun that she really enjoyed every single gift she received. Thank you to everyone for sending up such wonderful gifts! We were having such a great time that we lost track of time and missed getting the turkey in the oven. We opted to thaw some steak and tiger prawns instead. However, we missed the boat on that too because we were having so much fun playing, so we had a snacky dinner (sausage, cheese, noodles, etc) and it suited us just fine. We finished presents on Boxing Day. After which Margot took Lily out sledding with some kids while I sorted and re-arranged Lily’s toys and her play area. Now everything has a home in the kitchen.

One of the presents we got for Christmas was Toy Story 3, which is about a boy outgrowing his toys and how sad the toys are about not being played with any more. The reason I bring this up is Lily has opted to sleep with a new doll and has ousted three stuffed toys (a cat named Meow, a bunny that I had as a kid whom she named Booster and another bunny named Deetdeet). She is just fine with this and still plays with them but just doesn’t want them in bed. It makes me very sad thinking about their feelings. I know, I am sappy and they are just stuffies.

We hope you had a great Christmas!

-Richard and Margot