In orbit, astronauts celebrate Christmas in a unique way.

A SpaceX cargo ship delivered holiday sweets and research experiments to the International Space Station on Wednesday morning, just in time for Christmas.

During the holiday season, the orbiting laboratory will be home to seven crew members.

Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Dr. Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and Mark Vande Hei, and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer are among the multinational crew.

In a special Christmas video posted by NASA, Barron remarked, "Even though we'll be up here this year, we have our space family." "I believe we will establish some of our own customs, and we will be able to communicate with our relatives on the ground. I'm going to make sure I phone my family and tell them how much I'm thinking about them, how much I love them, and how excited I am to see them when I come home."

As the space station circles the Earth, Maurer said, the crew will be able to celebrate Christmas 16 times.

"There's a new family here in space, therefore I'm looking forward to spending Christmas as a family with this family," Chari added.

The entire crew would usually assemble for a special lunch and make phone calls to friends, family, and loved ones.

They'll also celebrate New Year's Eve together.

"We're fortunate to have the opportunity to explore so many nations, and we can travel from one side to the other in a matter of minutes," Marshburn added. "It genuinely offers us a sense of global togetherness for all human beings."

"We get to witness the dawn several times a day," Chari said, "so thinking about how people are waking up to a new year each time we see that morning is very fantastic."

Maurer is looking forward to getting started on some of the science projects that came on the cargo van, calling it "a fantastic start to the new year."

Vacations away from the Earth

Since the days of the Apollo missions, when the Apollo 8 crew notably shared their Christmas Eve message in a live television transmission in 1968 by taking turns reading from the Book of Genesis in the Bible, astronauts have recognized the practice of commemorating holidays in space.

According to NASA astronaut Dr. Andrew Morgan, who spoke to CNN in 2020, "how these holidays are commemorated and celebrated is up to each individual crew," and "space veterans like to exchange recommendations and ideas with newbies before they go up."

Morgan, Jessica Meir, Christina Koch, Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Skripochka, and Luca Parmitano spent the whole holiday season aboard the space station in 2019.

Morgan and his staff created a festive environment by playing Christmas music around the station and showing classic holiday movies in the days leading up to the holiday. According to him, the crew also utilized a projector with a video of a burning Yule log to make the space station appear to have a pleasant fireplace.

Due to the multinational character of their staff, they really celebrated Christmas twice: on December 25 and on January 7, which is Russian Orthodox Christmas.

Meir is Jewish, and she celebrated Hanukkah on the space station by tweeting photos of her festive socks, but she also grew up enjoying Christmas, and she engaged in the celebrations on the station.

If your concept of preparing ahead is buying Christmas gifts on Black Friday, astronauts planning ahead for their space mission that includes holidays have a totally different perspective.

"We had to plan a year or more ahead of time to make sure we bought, packed, and kept these gifts a secret the whole time," Morgan explained.

Morgan knew Parmitano liked a rare Russian delight called chocolate cheese, which is basically a thick chocolate fudge, so he reserved some for Parmitano's present. Morgan also included a harmonica in each crew member's stocking so that they might form a harmonica band on board.

While wearing identical festively striped pajamas, the team sent a holiday greeting and serenaded their mission control centers throughout the world with one refrain each from John Lennon's "Happy Christmas" and José Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad."

Morgan was missing his family and remembering the traditions he used to have with them. One of his favorite traditions is to spend Christmas Eve by candlelight. He grew raised with this custom, which he maintains with his family now.

All of the lights in the modules were turned off when he awoke on Christmas morning at the space station, which is a common event when the astronauts are sleeping.

Koch, on the other hand, had wrapped little flashlights in gold-colored tape to make them appear like small flickering candles. They may be found in the lab, the crew quarters, and the galley where the crew eats.

"I genuinely got worked up with nostalgia when I watched it," Morgan remarked. "It reminded me of how much I miss my family over the holidays, as well as Christina's kindness. She had paid close attention to that minor detail, and it was significant. It's one of many memories from my time aboard the space station that I treasure."

Many congratulations for the New Year.

To maintain a schedule, the space station uses Greenwich Mean Time. As they circle the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour, the crew sees 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets each day (28,000 kilometers per hour).

So when it's time to say "Happy New Year," the team will have plenty of opportunities to do so. As the New Year comes in their time zone, the astronauts make calls to each mission control.

For the Russian crew, New Year's is a far bigger occasion than Christmas, therefore the entire team gathered to share a massive lunch and toast to the coming year.

Another popular practice is to watch a Russian film titled "The Irony of Fate," which translates to "The Irony of Fate." "A little bit of a weird narrative about a gentleman who becomes so intoxicated, he finds up in Leningrad and doesn't remember how he got there," Morgan remarked of the 1976 Soviet romantic comedy television film.

Because it is a cultural custom in Russia to watch the film on New Year's Eve, it is included in the Russian portion.

"To be able to do it with our Russian crew members made it much more amazing," Morgan remarked. "That interchange of customs, as well as experiencing and celebrating each other's holidays across an international crew, will be the thing I carry away from that experience. It encapsulates everything positive about international collaboration and cultural exchange between nations."