[CHRISTMAS IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.]
Christmas is essentially a family festival: our very earliest recollections of it are of a day spent by the whole family together; a day on which the social distinctions of nursery, school-room, and drawing-room were as far as possible abolished, and on which all the little ones who could behave with anything like discretion were taken to church and dined with the elders. As the children grew up and dispersed to school and college, Christmas was still the day on which all reassembled to make one family once more.
But at length there comes a time when this reassembling is no longer possible, when the girls belong to new homes and new circles, and the boys are scattered abroad in distant lands, whence only loving thoughts can reach the 'old folks at home.' Then the good old Christmas toast, 'To all absent friends,' becomes full of meaning to the few who still assemble round the dear parental hearth, and is followed by a quiet pause, while imagination travels to all quarters of the globe, and the Christmas greeting infolds the whole world in its embrace. And the good wishes as they emanate from the home are met by returning thoughts from the sons, the brothers, it may be the husbands, in the distant lands where they too are keeping Christmas, though among circumstances very different to ours, and still striving as much as possible to keep up the customs they loved when they were young.
To us dwellers in Northern Europe, Christmas, with its apparently unseasonable heat, strikes us by its strange incongruity; but how strange must be a Christmas in the far north, where no sun rises to gladden the day on which the Sun of Righteousness rose upon the earth.
A year ago we had the happiness of welcoming back to their homes the latest heroes of the Polar Seas. We do not need to be reminded how, in May 1875, the Alert and the Discovery sailed from our shores, having for their destination the Pole itself. The Pole was not reached; that was beyond human power; but we felt that all that men could do was done, and we were thankful to see them home again. It is surely enough to have spent one Christmas in such desolation; in a higher latitude than ever man has reached before, and beyond the farthest point to which even the Esquimaux, the hardy natives of the lands of perpetual snow, have penetrated in their most distant wanderings; beyond the boundary of all animal life on land or sea, there British sailors and British ships have wintered, and the British flag has floated upon a sea of eternal ice. All honour be to them.
It seems to us wonderful that even with every attainable comfort, men should be able to live through an arctic winter, as any disaster to the ships must be certain death to the crews. That this has been the case before now, we know. That it is not invariably the case we know also; and the following account gives us a good picture of the different ways in which two companion vessels spent their Christmas in the frozen sea in 1870, and shews what diverse vicissitudes may be encountered by ships in the same season.
In the spring of 1870, before the war with France had broken out and taken up almost all the thoughts of the nation, Germany sent out two ships, the Germania and the Hansa, with the hope of reaching the North Pole. As is usually the case in arctic expeditions, little could be done during the first season, and the ships were obliged to take up their winter-quarters off the east coast of Greenland. They had already been separated, so that the crew of one vessel had no idea of the condition of the other. An officer upon the Germania thus writes of their Christmas:
'To the men who have already lived many weary months among the icebergs, Christmas signifies, in addition to its other associations, that the half of their long night—with its fearful storms, its enforced cessation of all energy, its discomfort and sadness—has passed, and that the sun will soon again shed his life- and warmth-giving beams on the long-deserted North. From this time the grim twilight, during which noon has been hardly distinguishable from the other hours, grows daily lighter, until at length all hearts are gladdened, and a cheerful activity is once again called forth by the first glimpse of the sun. Christmas, the midnight of the arctic explorer, thus marks a period in his life which he has good cause to consider a joyful one. On no day would it be more natural for him to recall his home; and though far from that loved spot, and cut off from all intercourse save with his little band of comrades, and being, moreover, uncertain whether the ice will retain him in its grasp, as it has retained so many before him, he is right to keep the festival with all cheerfulness; thankful, while remembering what he has already passed through and achieved, and full of firm courage and confidence for the unknown future.
'What are our friends at home doing? was the thought that stirred us all as we prepared to keep our Christmas 1870, in the true German style. We had no suspicion of the mighty struggle in which our Fatherland was then engaged, for what could we know of the affairs of the world, from which no sound had reached us for so many long weeks. Our world was only in our ship, and all around us, in the half-light of the weary monotonous arctic night, lay the apparently boundless desert of ice, while the snow-laden hurricane howled and moaned through the silence. We thought too of our mates on our companion-ship the Hansa, from whom we had been separated. Did they still live? Had they been so fortunate as to reach the shore, and were they, like us, honouring Christmas? Who could tell?
'For days before the festival, an unusual activity was observable all over the ship; and as soon as the severe storm which raged from December 16th to the 21st had abated, parties were organised, under our botanist Dr Pansch, to certain points of Sabine Island, near to which we were anchored, where, in a strangely sheltered nook, several varieties of a native Greenland evergreen plant, Andromeda tetragona, were to be found. A great quantity of this plant was conveyed on board, to be converted into a Christmas tree. Under the orders of Dr Pansch, the Andromeda was wound round small pieces of wood, several of which were attached, like fir-twigs, to a large bough; and when these boughs were fastened to a pole, they formed a very respectable fir-tree.