Barnard Celebrates
Nostalgic Christmas

The village of Barnard will train a magnifying glass on its holiday traditions circa 1840-1870 Dec. 16 with a participatory "Home for the Holidays" festival offering staged and costumed vignettes in village homes, themed music and food from 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16.

There is no charge to join the guided walking tours by lantern light to witness splices of past lives and to enjoy themed music. The celebration also comes, however, with a hearty farmhouse supper at Barnard’s Town Hall priced to appeal to families.

The Barnard Historical Society is sponsoring the program. Visitors can make donations to outreach programs that benefit the community of just over 800.

"By recognizing our past we can help preserve Barnard’s future," said Cliff Aikens, president of the Historical Society. "This is all about community and helping to keep our village values intact. There’s a magical quality to Barnard as it has been and still is today. We want old-timers and new-comers alike to value what we’ve got here."

Home for the Holidays isn’t a traditional tour of homes; rather it is a set of theatrical events. For one magical December afternoon, Barnard will become a living museum with vignettes enacted in kitchens and parlors, in a blacksmith shop and the general store.

Tour guides will draw pedestrians into the costumed and themed re-enactments that range from the temperance movement to gathering boxes for the men fighting in the Civil War.

Sue Cain of Royalton, a living history consultant, is providing input into the vignettes. Her expertise has been showcased on a PBS series on frontier and colonial houses.

The afternoon / early evening living museum is from 1-4 p.m. Visitors can pick up touring maps at both the Barnard Elementary School and Barnard’s Town Hall and proceed on foot or by horse and/or tractor-driven wagons to and from points of interest where they will be met by tour guides and escorted to the in-dwelling vignettes.

The "farmhouse supper" begins at 1 p.m. as well, with the last seating at 5 p.m. Barnard Elementary School children will perform a 30-minute concert of music from this period at 5:30 p.m. at the Universalist Church, followed by a 6:10 p.m. tree lighting on Silver Lake across from the Barnard General Store.

"We discovered when researching this 30-year period that the ways folks celebrated Christmases then were, for the most part, austere compared to today’s extravaganzas," said Aikens. "The focus was on seriousness, sobriety and survival; any celebrations were more inclined to New Years Eve than to Christmas Eve."

Proceeds from the supper and from donation boxes will benefit Barnard’s Helpings Hands, The Bees (assists the elementary school), Barnard Volunteer Fire Department and Progressive Club Scholarship Campaign and the Barnard Historical Society.