The world is witnessing the holidays like never before but despite the pandemic the thrill of the holidays remains, even for those in space.

The International space station is hosting the largest crew it ever has, seven members of the crew will celebrate their holidays in the orbiting laboratory.

The international crew of  NASA astronauts Kate Rubins, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover Jr. and Shannon Walker; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi; and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov will sit down for a special meal together. The team members will also call home to talk with friends, family and loved ones, CNN reported.

“I’m very happy to be on the space station this year because I get to share American traditions with my international crew mates,” Walker was quoted as saying by CNN.

Astronauts have been celebrating holidays in space since the days of the Apollo mission, when the Apollo 8 crew famously shared their Christmas Eve message in a live television broadcast in 1968 by taking turns reading from the Book of Genesis in the Bible.

“How these holidays are marked and celebrated is up to each individual crew, and space veterans tend to share suggestions and ideas with rookies before they go up,” NASA astronaut Dr. Andrew Morgan told CNN.

It doesn’t mean that there are no traditions of holidays in space. Christmas is mostly celebrated differently by each crew but on new years there are some commonalities.

Though the space station operates on Greenwich Mean Time to stick to a schedule, the crew witnesses 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets each day as they orbit the Earth.

So when it comes time to say “Happy New Year,” the crew has many chances to celebrate. They make calls down to each mission control as the New Year arrives in their time zone.

New Year’s is a much bigger holiday than Christmas for the Russian crew, so the entire crew came together to enjoy a large meal and toast to the year ahead.

One of the traditions is to watch “The Irony of Fate”, a 1976 Soviet romantic comedy television film which is watched on the new year’s day in in Russia as a tradition.

“To experience that with our Russian crew mates was extra special. That exchange of those traditions and experiencing each others’ holidays and sharing that with each other across an international crew, that will be the thing I take away from that experience. It embodies everything good about international cooperation and sharing traditions across different countries,” Morgan told CNN.