Christmas in Alaska

How Alaska celebrates Christmas

Christmas in Alaska follows the American pattern: the season opens after Thanksgiving, homes and streets are lit, families put up a tree, and Christmas Day, 25 December, is a federal holiday and an Alaska state holiday, with presents in the morning and a family dinner. Churches hold candlelight and midnight services on Christmas Eve.

What makes an Alaskan Christmas different is its setting and its mix of cultures. The holidays fall in the darkest weeks of the year, so lights matter more than almost anywhere else in the United States. Alaska has a long Russian Orthodox history, and many Alaska Native communities celebrate a second Christmas on 7 January. In the Arctic villages, Christmas is a time of shared feasts, Iñupiaq dancing and games, while settlers' traditions survive too, such as the Norwegian julebukking of Petersburg in Southeast Alaska.

North Pole, Alaska: Christmas all year

About 13 miles (21 km) southeast of Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway lies North Pole, a small city of 2,243 people at the 2020 census. In 1952 the Dahl and Gaske Development Company bought the former Davis homestead, subdivided it and renamed it North Pole, hoping to attract a toy manufacturer. The city was incorporated on 15 January 1953 and has embraced the theme ever since: streets are called Santa Claus Lane, St. Nicholas Drive and Kris Kringle Drive, and the street lights are decorated as candy canes.

The town's best-known attraction is Santa Claus House, which began as a trading post opened by Con and Nellie Miller in 1952 and grew into a Christmas shop where Santa is in residence all year. A giant fibreglass Santa stands outside, and a small herd of reindeer is kept next door. From late November to early January, the Christmas in Ice park beside it fills with Christmas-themed ice sculptures from its carving competitions.

Letters to Santa and the North Pole postmark

Before Christmas, the North Pole post office receives hundreds of thousands of letters addressed to Santa, and thousands more people send their Christmas cards there to be stamped with the town's North Pole postmark. The ZIP code 99705 is promoted as Santa's ZIP code, a community programme answers letters sent to 1 Santa Claus Lane, and Santa Claus House sells personalised letters from Santa, posted with the North Pole postmark.

Christmas in the dark

Alaska's Christmas comes just after the winter solstice, 21 December. In Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), the northernmost town in the United States, the sun sets in mid-November, around 18 November, and does not rise again until about 22 January: roughly 65 days of near-darkness, the polar night. Further south, the days are short but the sun does rise.

Lights therefore play a large part in the season. Above Anchorage, the Star on the Mountain, about 300 feet across and lit with 350 bulbs, shines from the Chugach Mountains near Arctic Valley each winter. It began in 1958 as a 15-foot star put up by an Army captain at a nearby missile site, is maintained by crews from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, and stays lit from late November until the last musher finishes the Iditarod sled dog race.

Russian Orthodox Christmas and starring

Orthodox Christianity reached Alaska in the 18th century with Russian fur traders, and missionaries arrived from 1795. The church took root among the Unangan (Aleut), Alutiiq (Sugpiaq), Yup'ik and Tlingit peoples, and it remains strong long after the United States bought Alaska in 1867. Alaska's Orthodox parishes keep the Julian church calendar, so they celebrate Christmas on 7 January and the Orthodox New Year on 14 January.

The heart of Orthodox Christmas in Alaska is starring, known as Slaviq, Selaviq or Slaaviq in Yup'ik communities and Slaawiq in Alutiiq; the name comes from the Slavonic slava, "glory". A large wooden star, covered in tinsel and with an icon of the Nativity at its centre, is spun on a pole while carollers sing hymns in Church Slavonic, English, Yup'ik and other languages. The star is carried from house to house, and each household welcomes the singers with food. In Bristol Bay, villages such as Dillingham and Aleknagik each have their own star, followed by the same families for generations, and singers kiss the icon at the end of the carols. Starring can last up to a week, and the star sometimes travels to neighbouring villages.

The custom came from the Carpathian Mountains of eastern Europe, where carollers carried a star at Christmas, and it has been kept in Alaska for more than a century. Starring is most elaborate in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, but it is also celebrated in Kodiak, the Aleutian Islands, the Kenai Peninsula and Anchorage, where the choir of St. Innocent Cathedral brings the star and its hymns to the Alaska Native Medical Center each 7 January.

Feasts and games in the Arctic villages

In the Iñupiat communities of Alaska's far north, Christmas is a community event. In Kaktovik, on the Beaufort Sea coast, Christmas Day is an all-day feast that opens with a prayer and thanks to the hunters and whalers. The food includes caribou soup and doughnuts, frozen whale meat, whale tongue and flukes, and maktak from the successful whaling crews; Christmas songs are sung in Iñupiaq and English, and the night ends with aġġi, Iñupiaq drumming, singing and dancing.

In Utqiagvik, the Iñupiaq Christmas Games run from Christmas into the first days of the New Year, with daytime games for the youngest and evening games for adults. In Kivalina, the Qaatchiaq races run every day from 26 December to New Year's Eve, with snowmachine and foot races, a race with caribou skins tied to sleds, an egg-and-spoon race and the stake race, the highlight. The event began in the 1960s as a sled dog race.

Christmas around Alaska

In Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, the season opens with the holiday tree lighting in Town Square Park downtown on the weekend after Thanksgiving, when Santa arrives to meet families. In Kodiak, the Kodiak Maritime Museum's Harbor Lights parade sends about a dozen decorated fishing boats through the Near Island Channel, a celebration of the commercial fishing fleet. In Petersburg, a fishing town with Norwegian roots, local businesses invite people in for julebukking in the week before Christmas, serving drinks, pastries and dishes made with local fish.

Christmas food in Alaska

Most Alaskan homes serve a standard American Christmas dinner, but the holiday tables of Alaska Native communities are built on food from the land and sea. Akutaq, sometimes called Eskimo ice cream, is made by whipping fat or seal oil by hand with berries or fish; its name comes from a word meaning "to stir", and today some cooks use vegetable shortening in place of animal fat.

New Year in Alaska

Most of Alaska runs on Alaska Standard Time, nine hours behind UTC, and the western Aleutian Islands are ten hours behind, so Alaska is among the last places in the world to see in the New Year. In Kotzebue, the Knight Riders snowmachine race on the frozen lagoon on 31 December leads up to midnight fireworks, and in Kivalina the Qaatchiaq races finish on New Year's Eve. Because Alaskans' friends and family elsewhere reach midnight hours earlier, many send their wishes ahead of time; free cards, status images, quote cards and ready-to-send wishes can be found among these New Year's Eve greetings for 2027. For Orthodox families the celebrations continue to 7 January and the Orthodox New Year on 14 January.

Alaska Christmas season dates 2026–27

Christmas in Alaska: frequently asked questions

Christmas in nearby countries