It’s March, must be time for Colonial Christmas

Christmas is a special season, and even in colonial America, families traveled to be together for the holidays. That was the premise for our occupation of the Kegg – Blasko house in Old Bedford Village on the second Saturday in December, 2008.

Ken, Janet, Charleen and I had been asked to participate in the village’s Old Fashioned Christmas Evening. The goal was to educate and entertain the public as they wandered from warmly lit house to warmly lit house.

Our basic storyline was that Charleen and I had traveled from Philadelphia to the Bedford area so that she could visit her sister, Jan, who had moved to the frontier with her trader/trapper husband.

A lot of planning went into trying to create the right atmosphere for the house. We decided that the smells of the holiday would make the most impact. Ken envisaged the boughs of pine around the house and rosemary and bay on the tables to freshen the air. Charleen wanted to have the smells of cooking greet the public. I found her a simple recipe for “Poor Man’s Fruitcake” that seemed like it would fit the bill. In true hope and a prayer fashion, we did not have a chance to make it before the program.

The day started early, with an eight a.m. departure from Jan and Ken’s house, because we knew that there was a lot preparation needed to get the house ready for our guests. We were bringing all the decorations, and all the baking and preparation items, and even water for washing the dirty dishes, so the back of the mini-van was solidly stuffed. We arrived at the village around noon, and immediately began getting the boxes and bags and clothing into the house.

The van was just about empty when Steve from the village walked up looking very agitated and distressed. He blurted out that “the octagon schoolhouse is on fire.” We grabbed buckets and kettles and started at a run up “Fremont Street”. When we got to the schoolhouse, it was apparent that we couldn’t do much about the fire itself, except hope that the Bedford Fire Department arrived soon. The fire was at the top of the roof, twenty feet above our heads, where the vent for the pot bellied stove came through the roof. What we could do was save the contents of the building, bringing them outside to save them from smoke and water damage. The fire department showed up soon after, and the building was saved with only minimal damage.

We still had much to do, Jan was making cookies for the evening, Charleen, the fruitcakes. Ken and I were making pine roping, decorating the tree, and making small logs out of big ones, to keep the baking fires hot and the cabin warm. We also put some cider with mulling spices near the fire to help warm us from the inside as well.

By three thirty the house was looking festive and the smells from all the spices conjured up all the pleasant memories of holidays at Grandma’s.

However, Grandma wasn’t cooking, so while Jan and Ken went into town to bring back something for dinner, Charleen and I retired upstairs to change into the clothes for the evening. While toasty warmness reigned downstairs by the fire, upstairs was quite a bit cooler and sliding into a linen shirt that was just a few degrees short of frozen was no small feat. Thank goodness that the natural fabrics pick up body heat quickly.

Five o’clock and showtime were rapidly approaching by the time we finished dinner. Ken and Jan barely had time to change into their togs before the first wave of public crossed over the bridge into the village. From then until the nine o’clock closing it was non-stop.

I don’t think we could have scripted the evening any better. Charleen played the rich, spoiled sister to Jan’s hard-worked-but-happy backwoods character. Charleen made sure to let her sister know that everything that she had brought over the mountains was done so at “great expense”. That was a line that was heard throughout the night. So much so that the public was finishing Charleen’s sentences for her with it.

Me, I played the solicitor from Philadelphia who had made this trip grudgingly, because my wife had no doubt nagged me into it. It was an annoyance to my character to be stranded in the wilderness away from my law practice, and forced to deal with the uneducated trapper who was my brother-in-law.

For all concerned it was a successful event. For Roger, it was 788 paying guests through the gate. For the public it was an experience of the past, heightened by the smells of the holidays. For the four of us, it was another event pulled off “at great expense” at least at the expense of sleep — we had to drive back home after a long and very busy day — Jan was scheduled to play for church on Sunday morning.