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While living on the International Space Station certainly cannot be considered a normal life, astronauts still perform the same basic activities of daily life that we do here on Earth. That means sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom, and celebrating the holidays. With the arrival and end of Christmas 2020, some may wonder how astronauts aboard the ISS celebrated Christmas and other holidays.
For the 2020 Christmas season, the ISS hosted seven crew members, which is the most for the orbiting laboratory. Astronauts aboard the space station during the Christmas season include Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov, JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, and NASA astronauts Kate Rubins, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover Jr., and Shannon Walker. The crew had a special holiday meal together and were able to call home to speak with friends, family, and loved ones.
The Christmas season also provided international crew members with the opportunity to share their Christmas traditions with crew from other countries. Some of the Christmas activities on the ISS in 2019 included astronaut Andrew Morgan and his team playing Christmas music throughout the station and classic Christmas movies. The crew also used a projector to display a recording of a burning Yule Log to make it look like there was a chimney on the space station.
ISS astronauts will celebrate Christmas twice, including December 25, and Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7. Astronaut Jessica Meir celebrated Hanukkah and participated in the holiday festivities aboard the station in 2019. Morgan said astronauts aboard the space station had to think a year in advance. for the delivery of Christmas gifts buying and hiding gifts to give to friends and family on Earth while on board the ISS.
Morgan and his team shared a special holiday message and sang to mission controllers around the world with a chorus of “Merry Christmas” by John Lennon and “Merry Christmas” by Jose Feliciano. Astronauts will celebrate the New Year aboard the station, and since they see 16 sunrises and sunsets each day, they can celebrate it multiple times.
