Williamsburg Keeps an Older Christmas

Christmas in Williamsburg is kept a full century older than anywhere else in the country, which turns out to be exactly the correction the season needed. The restored colonial capital dresses its doorways in fruit and greenery rather than lights, opens the holiday with an evening of bonfires and fireworks called the Grand Illumination, and spends December demonstrating that the eighteenth century, whatever its faults, knew how to keep a midwinter feast. Everything below assumes two or three nights in early December.

The colonial houses within the historic area take guests, and sleeping inside the restoration, with a fire laid and the modern town invisible from the window, is the correct version of this trip. The inn at the edge of the district offers the grander alternative, dressed for the season at full scale. Early December weekends, especially the Illumination weekend, book out months ahead, so commit in summer.

The Grand Illumination opens the holiday with cressets burning down the main street, muskets and cannon and fireworks over the capitol, and the whole town out in the cold, and if the dates can be managed it is the evening to build the trip around. Through the month the taverns hold candlelit concerts, the houses run their firesides, and the interpreters keep Christmas as the colonials did, which was socially, musically, and at length.

The wreaths are the connoisseur's show. The residents and tradespeople of the historic area decorate their doors with fruit, shells, cotton, and greenery in a competition judged formally every year, and the correct morning is spent walking the full length of the district, coffee in hand, adjudicating independently. The decorations use only what the eighteenth century had, which is the constraint that makes them beautiful.

The historic taverns serve the season's table by candlelight, game pies and peanut soup and syllabub, with servers who will explain the customs and musicians working the rooms, and one tavern dinner is mandatory even for the skeptical, who tend to surrender by the second course. Book the taverns when you book the room. The modern restaurants of the adjacent village handle the remaining meals capably.

Aim for the first two weeks of December, check the Illumination date before choosing anything else, and dress for standing outdoors in the cold, since the best of the season happens in the street. The great museums of the town reward the coldest afternoon, and the palace green at dusk, when the cressets are lit, rewards every evening.

On the last night, walk the main street after the crowds thin, when the candles are burning in the windows because the eighteenth century put them there. Every Christmas tradition was new once. This town simply stopped at the good ones, and December is when the decision pays.