Carla

But I think you will agree that we are fighting against the dry as dust and the little grey haired ladies having tea and cookies perceptions people have. It is an ongoing challenge not just at the holidays, to provide programs that are attractive to the general public while still remaining true to the mission. My general history museum is housed in an 1820s mansion which poses a whole other set of challenges which I might talk about in a later post. But one of my staff overheard during our holiday program our longtime volunteers (and former board member) posit that the house would look wonderful if decorated for a victorian Christmas. It is this kind of comment that makes you say (a la Charlie Brown) UUUUUgh! It also shows you that the most diligent training and information will not reach everyone but that doesn’t mean you give up or give in. Persistence and accomplish much.

We get 1/3 of our visitors in December for our hodge-podge, garden-club decorated, ahistorical holiday tours into our colonial and early American houses.
What I really want to do next year is wassail and sweetmeats. Not a tour, no busses, no decorations (other than the food) and a higher priced ticket. Fewer visitors, more accuracy, hopefully more revenues.

Thanks for this post.

At my job we used to have a hodge podge Christmas program which I refer to as “cider and cookies Christmas programs.” These generally include hot apple cider, chocolate chip and/or sugar cookies, and some notation of Christmas of by-gone years. Christmas trees and Santa Claus are included even if inappropriate to the time period or place specific. I think they harken people’s mindsets of “good ol’ days.”

As an interpreter or visitor, I do not like “cider and cookies programs.” They do not tell people enough about how people celebrated holidays in the past. I reckon this mindset can extend to July 4th programs. I have never been to a historic site where Jewish people were the primary interpretive focus during Hanukkah (so I don’t know what types of things those sites may be up to).

I started doing a Christmas program at the historic plantation that is a part of my site back in 2007. I repeated the program in 2009. I researched the people who were in the house around Christmas, 1858. I looked to see what the enslaved people who lived on the plantation could expect to receive or not receive that year. I researched what their lives were like before December 1858. Information was given to the volunteers and we had several guided tours for the public.

This year I focused the program on Christmastime, 1861. We had to make some educated guesses but I still was pleased and the public was filled with questions.

However, we no longer include a Christmas tree (since the family who owned the place did not have one in their home until Christmas 1866). We do not have a Santa Claus. We are barred from serving the public food anyway so luckily that battle was fought before I started working.

I have had people who used to go to the hodge podge program which included civilians, soldiers, and cider and cookies (really) and Santa and Christmas trees. However, they were extremely complimentary of the programs I have organized which have an interpretive focus to show what it meant to be enslaved and what it meant to own slaves in the antebellum and wartime South.

I think those of us, like you and me, who practice public history, owe it to the historical record to let visitors see as best as possible what it was like to live in the past and holidays should not derail us from our interpretive messages. Others milage I know varies but that’s how I feel and I try to structure my programs to show that people had fun but to also get folks to understand that the “good ol’ days” were not always good.