December Holidays in Space

You may have looked up at the sky on a clear Christmas Eve hoping to catch a glimpse of good old St. Nick and his reindeer descending from the starry heights. But did you ever wonder if anyone was looking down in hopes of seeing Santa from above the earth's atmosphere? It could have happened! If you had been one of a billion people on earth listening to a Christmas Eve broadcast in 1968, you would have heard a greeting that was out of this world."...Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you -- all of you on the good Earth," said Commander Frank Borman as he, and his fellow crew members of the Apollo 8 mission, Jim Lovell and William Anders, orbited the moon on December 24, 1968. They were the first human beings to orbit the moon and the first astronauts to spend Christmas in space.

Since that time, there have been quite a few out of this world December holiday celebrations. In 1978, Skylab, America's first space station, was decorated for Christmas by the Skylab 4 crew, Gerald Carr, William Pogue and Edward Gibson. Proving that astronauts can be very crafty decorators, they created a Christmas tree using food cans.

American astronaut David Wolf celebrated Hanukkah aboard the Russian space station, MIR, in 1997. He set up the first menorah in space, although he could not light it since open flames are a safety hazard. He enjoyed observing the holiday traditions. There was one tradition in particular that near zero gravity turned into a record breaker. His dreidel spun for at least an hour and a half. It may have been longer, but he lost track of it until a few weeks later when it was discovered in an air filter. So how far did his dreidel go? Wolf said, "I figure it went about 25,000 miles."

While only one Christmas has been spent aboard the Space Shuttle, it was certainly a very important one. You might say it was the space trip that gave the world a present. The Hubble Space Telescope, which has looked farther into space than anyone dreamed possible, was in need of repair. After working for three days, the seven member crew of the Discovery Space Shuttle had the Hubble back to gathering those awesome photos on Christmas Day, 1999.

The International Space Station has hosted three Christmastime crews beginning with Christmas 2000. Videos (see the links below) posted on the NASA website let us get a glimpse into holiday celebrations in space - everything from good wishes and holiday cakes to a video in which the crew on the Space Station and NASA (on earth) tracked Santa as he made his way around the

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