About Christmas time there are ceremonials for the dead for three or four days. Persons who have lost their relatives in the past year are called upon by the shaman to contribute the bulk of the feast. “Who will contribute so many bundles of salmon?” asks the shaman, “so many sacks of seal oil, so many sealskins or caribou skins, so many cords of sinew (for sewing), the œsophagus of a white whale (used in trimming)?” People eat to their heart’s content. Sometimes they eat for the dead, sometimes they set aside the food—the best that can be got from the woods and waters. The missionaries are told that these are merely social feasts. Not that many of the old ceremonies have not indeed been cut out at Anvik. If a ceremonial can not be performed fully, in the proper way, people do not want it performed at all. Yet it is much against the wish of the people to go without their ceremonials. The “feasts,” as I have often told the missionary, are the only amusements of the people, and they would like to keep on with them just as they do at the conservative village of Shagrūk.