In Greenland, people visit family and friends, drink coffee, eat cakes
and exchange gifts like a model sledge, a pair of tusks, or even a
sealskin mitt wrapped in bright colors. Everybody gets Mattak, a whale
skin with a strip of blubber inside, as a gift on Christmas. In
villages, children go from hut to hut singing songs. Christmas trees are
imported and are decorated with candles and bright ornaments. People
dance all night long and sing carols.
Mattak tastes like coconut, but is tougher to chew and thus, is
swallowed whole sometimes. Kiviak is the traditional Christmas food. It
is the raw flesh of an auk, buried whole in sealskin for several months.
On this day, men have to wait upon women and people games, such as
passing object hand to hand under the cloth round a long table, for
pastime.
