With candles, songs and words of support, Blue Christmas in Utqiaġvik brings together people who lost loved ones to suicide

Utqiaġvik residents gathered around a snow carving and raised flickering candles during a frosty Saturday night to remember people they recently lost.

The Blue Christmas event took place on Dec. 21, with about 150 Utqiaġvik residents gathering inside and outside the Eben Hopson Middle School and residents in other villages joining remotely.

For the second year in a row, Utqiaġvik’s Blue Christmas also featured a snow sculpture. It depicted an umiaq with figures and animals on and beside it to represent subsistence practices that unite the North Slope villages, as well as mascots of local schools. Sculptor Paul Hanis and community leader Herman Ahsoak spoke about the meaning of the sculpture during the event.

[North Slope residents will gather in person and virtually around a snow sculpture to support each other in grief]

“It’s really cool that we can get people involved in their traditional activities to really help them feel connected to the community and then realize that they’re not a burden on anybody, that they are really a necessary part of the functioning of their community, and if they weren’t there, we’d really, really miss them,” said Yvonne Biswokarma, a volunteer at the Arctic Mission Adventure Ministry.

During the event, participants spoke about different types of grief and loss as they lit candles. The first candle was in memory of people who died, the second one — to ask for deliverance from the pain of loss, the third one for each other and the fourth one candle as a symbol of hope and promise.

After the candle-lighting ceremony, people stepped outside the school into the cold evening and held a service around the snow carving, Biswokarma said.

The event also included speeches from pastors, health officials and people who recently experienced a loss in their family, as well as songs from several choirs and a Barrow Dancers performance.

Participants included people of all ages, with Elders sharing their thoughts about suicide in the community and children running around, Biswokarma said. Everyone enjoyed hot drinks, refreshments and dinner catered by Top of the World Hotel.

The keynote speakers — Mark and Mindy Tamaleaa —shared their experience of losing a son and a nephew to suicide and spoke about practical ways to process grief, from self-care to reaching out for help and incorporating faith in the healing journey, Biswokarma said.

“A lot of people in the community can definitely connect to that. So many of us have had people close to us that have died in ways that were not expected, either suicide or other tragedies,” Biswokarma said.

Charles Brower, a pastor at the Utqiaġvik’s Presbyterian Church, did the opening and closing prayers.

“Since COVID we’ve had a very different way of grieving. A lot of the times, it is more internal, not being able to share,” Brower said. “To deal with it in the dark and cold is difficult.”

Brower said the community saw a lot of suicides recently, and often it involves people who have spent some time in treatment centers and came back to the community where they don’t have enough people to support them in their healing.

He said the most important part of the event was “just the people gathered together supporting one another.”

Participants came up and shared their stories as well, Biswokarma said.

“We had several people (who) had recently lost somebody, and it was just really neat to see people gathering around them and supporting them,” Biswokarma said. “And the connections of people who have lost and been processing it for a little bit longer, and then them reaching out to people who have been had to go through it more recently — it was special to see that happening.”