Presumably, when people attend these events, they intend to absorb some history along with the holiday ambience of a beautifully decorated mansion. Its website explains how the mansion before the Civil War embodied “wealth and prosperity in Tennessee,” and that it resulted from its owners’ successes in acquiring land and enslaved people as well as ventures in railroads, medicine, and retail. Though the Oaklands Mansion in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, had no historically renowned owner in its pre-Civil War heyday, it certainly had a history that embellishes its public appeal. Crowds would be smaller if these sites lacked historical stories.Īmerica’s first president, after all, resided at Mount Vernon.

At Mount Vernon in Virginia, adults shell out $36 for the “Christmas Illuminations” package with fireworks and tours.Īlthough lots of people love fireworks (and of course rich meals and gawking at gorgeous gardens, lavish holiday greenery, and centuries-old architecture and furnishings), the holiday appeal of these site events derives partly from their historical significance. Re-enactors recreate Christmas 1782 when British troops evacuated the Charleston area at the end of the American Revolution.

South Carolina’s Middleton Place, for example, charges $25-$69 for its holiday “Grand Illumination” and dinner. Once again this fall, historic southern mansions and plantation sites are gearing up for the annual Christmas season influx of tourists.

Yuletide in Dixie by Robert E May