l The Christmas season in Colonial Williamsburg, which lasts from Thanksgiving Day through the first weekend in January, allows visitors to experience the festive sights and sounds associated with the holidays in colonial times.
Minnigerode, who decided to give the children of his friend Nathaniel Tucker a Christmas surprise by trimming an evergreen in the Tucker’s parlor with candles as he would have done in his home country. Now each Christmas, a tree is decorated in the St. George Tucker House parlor as a remembrance of that night. Had it not been for the care and vision of one man, however, this tradition might never have come to be.
Decline and Rebirth
By the early twentieth century, the historic structures of Colonial Wil- liamsburg were in danger of being lost to the rapidly changing American landscape. Telephone poles criss- crossed the sky; cars ran along the streets; billboards adorned the sides of the buildings; and once-quaint Duke of
PHOTO: ©NATHAN BENN/OTTOCHROME/CORBIS
Colonial residents of Williamsburg celebrated the Christmas season with gusto, and the holidays lasted a full twelve nights, ending with Epiphany, on January 6.
to prove that the colonists decorated their homes for Christmas, it is likely that they followed the English custom of using holly and swags of evergreen to add color and fragrance to their residences. Christmas trees didn’t appear until much later. The first Christmas tree in Williamsburg is believed to have been put up around 1842 by a political refugee from Germany named Charles
T H E E L K S M A G A Z I N E
PHOTO: COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION, WILLIAMSBURG, VA
This table, set in the kitchen of the
George Wythe House, is laden with holiday foods, including turkey, puddings, bread, and pumpkin pie.
l Topped with a needlework and ostrich-plume crown, a Regency tree in the lobby of the Williamsburg Inn enlivens the holiday season for Colonial Williamsburg’s guests.
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PHOTO: ©LEO CHARETTE (
WWW.LEOCHARETTE.COM)
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