Qotd: Christmas at Colonial Williamsburg

nobody@vox.com(Purplesque) — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:50:30 -0800

Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia is the world's largest living history museum, with a carefully restored 301 acre historic area. This is where we just spent our Christmas vacation, and it was the most amazing vacation I've had in the US. The historic downtown has several original buildings and others that have been carefully restored. Actors, dressed in period costumes , roam the city and man the shops and taverns, orienting people to various places and customs, answering questions, and teaching more history than I ever learned in a year at school! You can find more information here and here, me, I'm just going to post pictures. We started with the Governor's palace.

Your carriage awaits!

The palace kitchen

The Colonial Christmas table

After the Governor's palace, we listened to Thomas Jefferson speak in the palace gardens. These speeches are one of the most popular events in CW. The speakers are very knowledgeable, stay in character no matter what questions you ask, and have a great sense of humor. Quote Thomas Jefferson - 'This is the year 07 [1807, that is]), and next year we must suffer another presidential election. ' The crowds loved that.

The trade shops were super cool.

At night, there was the Grand Illumination for Christmas, accompanied by firing of the muskets and the famous Fife and Drums, the musical corps made up of 10 - 18 year olds from the community. It was an unforgettable performance.

Fife and Drums

There were so many wonderful things, and so much I want to share its hard to organize. The Christmas decorations in CW are done in the traditional style. Even though the colonials themselves hardly decorated, the citizens of CW reached a compromise with the restoration project fifty years ago, and what you see are the results of that compromise, wreaths with fresh fruit and flowers, sometimes depicting the trader's work, but always elegant and relatively sober.

We also visited the Dewitt Wallace museum of arts, which is now housing a collection of children's toys and dollhouses!

He likes!

I like!

The museum is actually located in what used to be the Public Hospital for the Lunatics and the Mentally Insane, the first public hospital for the mentally ill in the colonies. That is a separate post in itself. More later..have fun!

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