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The holiday spirit of many eras
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 [Photo: Ralph Morang] Carriage rides, costumed re-enactors and musical performances add to the experience of Strawbery Banke’s winter-holiday events. |
By MICHAEL SCHUMAN
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 23, 2001
A small neighborhood in Portsmouth, N.H., is used to re-create annual celebrations from the 1700s to the 1950s. |
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Across a dirt road in the William Pitt Tavern, frozen in 1777, it is Christmas Day. Here, travelers and Freemasons celebrate with food and song but nothing even slightly resembling a Christmas tree.
One must enter yet another home to see such a tree, stretching gloriously from floor to ceiling and garnished with felt hearts and candles. This traditional tree stands in the parlor of the Goodwin House, a grand white wedding-cake mansion, where it is Christmas 1870.
There is another Christmas tree, but one not nearly so grand, in the 1943 period home of the Abbott family, proprietors of a small grocery store. In their time of shortages and rationing, the Abbotts get by with a spindly tree standing in a flower pot placed on a table.
Should visitors forget a war is going on, they need only look at the pair of hand-knit socks resting on the kitchen table, alongside a booklet titled "Knit for Victory."
In all these scenes, town crier Bill Moss alerts visitors that all is well at 5 o'clock, or 6:45, or 7:30, and lets them know carolers are presently singing. They stroll the dusty roads (or muddy or snowy roads, depending on the weather) in this holiday setting.
 [Photo: Ralph Morang] |
| More than 1,000 luminarias light the way for visitors during the annual Candlelight Stroll.
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To be accurate, Strawbery Banke is not re-created at all, but a preserved neighborhood where many of the historic museum homes stand on original foundations. Not frozen in one time period, like Colonial Williamsburg's 1750s or Old Sturbridge Village's 1830s, the buildings of Strawbery Banke reflect the ups and downs in the long history of the community.
During the 18th century, this seaport thrived. By the early 20th century, it was Portsmouth's version of Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Which brings us back to the Shapiro House. Abraham and Sarah Shapiro really were Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants who lived here when the 20th century was young, and their descendants have helped Strawbery Banke personnel ensure that living history interpretation is accurate.
On this December evening depicted during Strawbery Banke's Candlelight Stroll, it is the first night of Hanukkah. Guide Barbara Ann Paster is in character as Sarah Shapiro.
As the chopped onions make her eyes tear up, Paster tells visitors the Ukrainian government was not as tolerant about letting Jews celebrate their holidays. But as one of about 50 Jewish families in Portsmouth, the Shapiros celebrate openly. Two menorahs sit atop a sideboard while a third lights up a window facing Jefferson Street.
"Sarah" relates methods of observing Hanukkah in the New World, 1919. It's a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, and children's gifts are relegated to gelt, or coins. Her 10-year-old daughter, Molly, is visiting a friend's house and learning about Christmas.
"A tree inside a house, she never heard of such a thing," marvels Sarah. "Maybe Molly might want a tree in her house, too."
The Pitt Tavern is roughly 100 yards and 145 years from the Shapiro House. Inside, militiamen Mark Noble and Bob Kilham, dressed in breeches and buttoned shirts, entertain visitors with a ditty called Boston Harbor, which includes, "We do crave that our captain meets with a watery grave."
In the tavern kitchen a woman retrieves a mince pie from the hearth oven, explaining that most pies are not meant to be eaten as a dessert, for they are not sweet. Only the wealthiest can afford white sugar, she says.
Why is there no Christmas tree on this Christmas Day in 1777? Because this is austere New England, and celebrating Christmas as a holiday is considered garish, even sacrilegious, by some.
To find a Christmas celebration modern-day visitors would recognize, they must enter the Goodwin House, where wealthy former New Hampshire governor, Ichabod Goodwin, and his family are at home.
This federal-style mansion with white marble fireplaces is decked in its Christmas finest, 1870 style. The red cedar Christmas tree in the living room is a popular choice in Victorian Portsmouth because it holds its needles.
Hardly a space in the Goodwin home is not bathed with a Christmas flavor. Hand-crafted adornments grace walls and hang from ceilings. Dangling by strings in one hallway are "doves of peace," constructed from turkey feathers, fern fronds and Queen Anne's lace.
Decking the back of one door is a Christmas bell made of feathers, felt, reindeer moss, clover seeds and rose bush leaves. The Goodwins do not scrimp.
On the other hand, the Abbotts, proprietors of the neighborhood general store, pinch pennies. Although the building housing the Abbott home and store was constructed around 1720, its interior is stuck in 1943, and the theme is a wartime Christmas.
From Pep Flakes to Duz detergent, the stock reflects the day hardware meant hammers and software might have referred to lingerie.
In the storefront window, a poster highlighted by a drawing of Santa Claus wearing a military helmet admonishes shoppers to send gifts overseas early. In the Abbott family kitchen, the only real hints of the holiday are the little Christmas tree, a fruitcake atop a red-checkered tablecloth, those hand-knit socks Mrs. Abbott lovingly made as a gift for their store's teenage clerk, and a vintage radio emitting period holiday music.
Another Strawbery Banke building, the Drisco House, was completed in 1795 but today has a split personality. One half reflects the well-stocked Shapley Store and residence of the 1790s. The other half is adorned in its 1950s Christmas best, including bubble lights on the family tree and paint-by-numbers masterpieces on the wall. The Burns and Allen Christmas show is presented in grainy black and white on a vintage General Electric television set.
Entertainment from all historic periods represented is scheduled on the evenings re-enactors fill the buildings. On any given day, visitors might hear holiday music in the Cider Shed, Victorian Christmas and Hanukkah parlor songs in the Stoodley Tavern, or colonial-era fife and drum music performed by musicians roaming the grounds.
- Freelance writer Michael Schuman lives in Keene, N.H.
If you go
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THE MUSEUM: Strawbery Banke is a not-for-profit, educational institution. It encompasses more than three dozen sites and structures. The attraction is open daily May 1-Oct. 31 and is open Thursday-Sunday every month but January, when it is closed.
The Candlelight Stroll typically takes place for four nights in the first half of December. This year, admission was $13 for adults and $9 for children 7-17; the fee for a family of two adults and children was $30.
The first Saturday is usually the most crowded, with lines to get into the buildings. Sundays are usually the least crowded, with 7 to 9 p.m. the least busy time.
Because the rooms of several buildings are off limits, visitors at times must stand in groups at doorways to hear the living history interpreters.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact Strawbery Banke, P.O. Box 300, Portsmouth, NH 03802; call (603) 433-1100. The Web site is www.strawberybanke.org.
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
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