Christmas in Greenland

How Greenland celebrates Christmas

Greenland, Kalaallit Nunaat, is a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark with about 57,000 people, most of them Inuit. Lutheran Christianity was brought by the Dano-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede, who led an expedition in 1721 and founded the colony at Godthåb, today's Nuuk. About nine in ten Greenlanders belong to the Lutheran Church of Greenland, a semi-independent diocese of the Church of Denmark, so Christmas, Juulli, is both a church festival and the biggest family occasion of the year.

The Greenlandic Christmas follows the Danish calendar, with the main celebration on Christmas Eve, but it has its own character: the dark, the stars in the windows, the visiting from house to house and food hunted and fished from the land and sea. Christmas trees do not grow in Greenland, so they are imported, often from Denmark.

Stars in the windows and Advent

The best-known sight of a Greenlandic Christmas is the Christmas star. Through Advent and Christmas, lit paper stars hang in the windows of most homes and all kinds of public buildings, glowing out over the snow in towns and settlements where, north of the Arctic Circle, the sun does not rise for weeks. The custom is often credited to the Moravian missionaries who once worked in Greenland. Homes are also decorated with Advent candles, and many families count down to Christmas with Advent calendars. St Lucia's Day, 13 December, is also observed, as in Scandinavia.

Christmas Eve: church, dinner and presents

Christmas Eve, 24 December, is a public holiday and the centre of the festival. Most Greenlanders go to a Christmas Eve church service, where hymns and carols are sung in Greenlandic, the official language of Greenland, and Danish, the church's two languages. Many people go in national dress, and some men wear the white anorak kept for special occasions. Some families also light candles on the graves of loved ones, a custom shared with other Nordic countries.

After church comes the Christmas dinner and the opening of presents, which in Greenland, as in Denmark, happens on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. Presents are brought by Julemanden, the Danish Santa Claus. Christmas Day and the Second Day of Christmas, 25 and 26 December, are also public holidays, kept for church, rest and visiting.

Kaffemik and Christmas visiting

Visiting is at the heart of a Greenlandic Christmas. Families and neighbours go from house to house over the holidays, and hosts lay out coffee, cakes and biscuits for whoever calls in. This open-house coffee visit, known in Greenland as kaffemik, is part of family celebrations throughout the year, and Christmas is its busiest season. In the small settlements of the north, accounts describe whole communities visiting one another with coffee, cake and wrapped presents, with traditional gifts such as polished walrus tusks and sealskin mittens.

Traditional Greenlandic Christmas food

A Greenlandic Christmas table combines food from the hunt with Danish Christmas dishes. Not every family eats all of the traditional specialities at Christmas, but they remain the dishes most associated with a Greenlandic feast.

Kiviaq is the most famous and the most demanding: up to 500 whole little auks are packed into a sealskin, the air pressed out, the skin sewn shut and sealed with fat, and the bundle is left under stones to ferment for about three months. Mattak is usually eaten raw, and eaten that way it is an important source of vitamin C.

Santa Claus in Uummannaq

In Danish tradition, Julemanden lives in Greenland. His home is placed at Spraglebugten, a bay on the west side of Uummannaq Island, about 590 km north of the Arctic Circle in north-west Greenland. A turf hut known as Santa's Castle was built there for a Danish television programme, and it has remained Santa's home in the popular imagination of Danish and Greenlandic families ever since. The town of Uummannaq, home to about 1,400 people, sits below the steep Uummannaq Mountain, which rises to 1,170 m.

Christmas in the polar night

More than 80 per cent of Greenland's land lies north of the Arctic Circle, where the sun stays below the horizon around the winter solstice: the polar night. Even in Nuuk, about 240 km south of the Arctic Circle, the sun rises at about 11:22am and sets at about 3:28pm on 21 December, giving about four hours of daylight. This is why light, from candles to window stars and fireworks, matters so much in the Greenlandic Christmas.

Danish Christmas customs in Greenland

Centuries of ties with Denmark mean that many Danish Christmas customs are part of Greenlandic life, especially in the towns. The main celebration on juleaften, Christmas Eve, the roast pork or duck with red cabbage, and risalamande, the rice pudding with a hidden almond that wins a small prize for whoever finds it, all come from Denmark, as does the custom of joining hands to dance around the Christmas tree singing carols before the presents are opened.

The mischievous nisser, the Christmas elves of Danish folklore said to live in attics and barns, decorate homes, and in Danish households the youngest may leave out a saucer of milk or rice pudding for them on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The Danish julefrokost, a long Christmas lunch with plenty of food and drink held by workplaces, sports clubs and groups of friends, usually on a Friday or Saturday in the weeks before Christmas, is also part of the season, especially in the towns.

New Year's Eve, twice

New Year's Eve, 31 December, is a public holiday in Greenland, and it is celebrated twice. Because Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and many families have relatives there, people first mark the moment the New Year reaches Denmark, with fireworks and rockets, and then celebrate again at Greenland's own midnight. Since Greenland moved its clocks forward an hour in March 2023, Nuuk and most of the country keep UTC−2 in winter, three hours behind Denmark, so the Danish New Year now arrives at 9pm in Nuuk; before 2023 the gap was four hours and the first celebration came at 8pm. A few places, including Pituffik Space Base in the north-west and Danmarkshavn in the north-east, keep different time. With family spread between Greenland and Denmark and the hours apart, many people send their wishes by phone; free Happy New Year 2027 cards, WhatsApp and Instagram status images, quote cards and ready-to-send messages can be found among these New Year wishes to send across the time zones. New Year's Day is a public holiday, and the season ends at Epiphany on 6 January.

Greenland Christmas season dates 2026–27

Christmas in Greenland: frequently asked questions

Christmas in nearby countries