1800s Christmas at museum
History? Dull? Not when there’s dancing involved. And nothing can be dull when it’s sweetened with hot cider and ginger cake.
For the 47th year, the Historic Arkansas Museum parties 19th century-style at the Christmas Frolic and Open House on Sunday. While the museum spends the entire year offering a look at life in early Arkansas through living history presentations, demonstrations and historic buildings, the frolic is special.
“The frolic is an illustration of how the holiday would have been celebrated in the 1800s, in the times of the early Arkansas frontier,” explains museum Communications Manager Chris Hancock.
That means old-school decorations, roaming fiddlers, carolers and period music by the Arkansas Country Dance Band and Lark in the Morning.
Dancing is actively encouraged as re-enactors help ease visitors into the Virginia Reel at the Hinderliter Grog Shop, the oldest surviving building in Little Rock, and give them a taste of what an old-fashioned holiday dance was like.
Taste is a “staple” of the frolic thanks to supplies of sweet Christmas snacks.
Hancock says, “I’m sure if we asked our visitors what their favorite part is, they’d say the hot cider and ginger cake!”
A blacksmith/bladesmith master will give demonstrations and there will be pioneer games and stilts for the kids — or the kid-like.
As always at the museum, a group of performers will share stories of old Little Rock through living history presentations, giving visitors a more in-depth, personal experience, something Hancock says “really sets our museum experience apart from other cultural attractions.”
It’s the museum’s hope that, through experiencing an early Arkansas Christmas, visitors will be surprised to see how little some things have changed.
“There’s a lot we have in common with early Arkansans,” Hancock says. “We think sometimes that our lives are drastically different and in many ways they are.”
But when people let go, embrace the fun and cut a rug in a grog shop with friends and family, “You realize early Arkansans celebrated this holiday season much the same way that we still do. Some of those things never change. The best of those things never change.”
The Historic Arkansas Museum isn’t the only one getting festive on Sunday. The Old State House Museum will have its Open House just a few blocks away with crafts for children, carols and treats of cookies and punch.
For more culture and Christmas goodies, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center is hosting its open house with music and crafts and its “Say It Ain’t Say’s” Sweet Potato Pie Baking Contest.