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George Washington Birthplace National Monument will hold a Christmas celebration on Sunday.
George Washington Birthplace National Monument will hold a Christmas celebration on Sunday.
EMILY GILMORE
Date published: 12/23/2004
THE FREE LANCE-STAR
George Washington wouldn't know what to make of all the hoopla that leads up to Christmas each year.
Nowadays, people are so burned out by holiday festivities that they just want Christmas to be over by the time Dec. 25 rolls around.
For the nation's first president, the party was just getting started on Christmas Day. Celebrations that began on Dec. 25 lasted until the feast of Epiphany on Jan. 6, or Twelfth Night, when the three wise men are said to have visited the baby Jesus.
If you haven't used up all your Christmas spirit on the hustle and bustle of the modern holiday season, celebrate for one more day at George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Westmoreland County.
The historic property will observe all 12 days of Christmas in one day on Sunday, Dec. 26.
The memorial house will be decorated for the holidays much like it might have been during Washington's first Christmas in 1733. The decorations will remain on display until Jan. 6.
A far cry from today's blinking lights and hulking yard sculptures, natural decorations like holly and boxwood would have adorned the Washingtons' home, said Dick Lahey, a ranger for the National Park Service, which oversees GWBNM.
The Washingtons, who were English, would not even have had a Christmas tree, since trees are a German tradition introduced by Queen Victoria, Lahey said.
On Sunday, a flutist, a violinist and a spinet player will fill the memorial house with traditional music of the 18th century. Costumed interpreters dressed in the best Christmas finery of the 1730s will be on hand to relate tidbits about the lifestyle and holiday traditions of the time.
George and Jan Beckett will portray Washington's parents, Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. Jan Beckett is the president of the George Washington Birthplace National Memorial Association.
As followers of the Anglican calendar of the Church of England, the Washingtons would have done very little to prepare for the holiday, Lahey said.
While modern America tends to celebrate Christmas before it's happened, colonists saw Advent, the period before Christmas, as a time of anticipation similar to Lent, which comes before Easter.
Decorations didn't even go up until Dec. 25, when a huge feast would be prepared for expected and unexpected guests.
Date published: 12/23/2004
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