Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Ben’s Place of the Week: A Christmas Special

A couple of years ago I posted about the red crabs on Christmas Island. Seeing as my mind is cluttered with thoughts of cookies and carols and presents I haven’t bought yet, I figured I would poke around for some other place names that relate to the approaching holiday. The first one I encountered was Christmas Creek, in the state of Western Australia, just north of the Great Sandy Desert. Next I found Christmas Cove—so named because John Smith allegedly anchored here in the seventeenth century. Getting a bit more creative, I stumbled across Navidad, a town on the Chilean coast not far from Santiago, the capital. Sure these discoveries were fun, but what excited me most, was the existence of three other places scattered around the globe: Comet, Australia; Dasher, Georgia (US); and Rudolfshiem, Austria. Kinda makes you wonder where Prancer and Vixen are from, doesn’t it? Fittingly, it has just begun to snow here in Midtown Manhattan.


Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford Atlas of the World. Check out some of his previous places of the week.

Recent Comments

  1. mollymooly

    There’s also Donner Pass, but the food there wasn’t very Christmassy.

  2. Ben

    You have a point Molly, but I tried to keep things cheerful…

Comments are closed.