Photo Credit: Don Sweeney, FCPA
Imagine planning a nighttime event in the winter without supplying heat or electricity. Instead, the Sully Historic Site in Virginia creates a holiday spirit, setting the house aglow with flickers of light that make visitors want to kick up their heels and join the shadows dancing on the walls.
The one-time home of Richard Bland Lee, Northern Virginia’s first representative to Congress, provides an opportunity to portray life as it was lived in the early 1800s. Since the Fairfax County Park Authority’s (FCPA) obligation is to preserve Lee’s house (not update it), the staff members rely on fresh interpretive ideas to keep attracting visitors. This approach comes through careful selection and a presentation of themes that change seasonally and—on one special occasion—according to light.
Exploring the house at Sully only during daylight park hours doesn’t tell the whole story because the folks who originally lived there were at home at night, too. To extend an interpretation of the house to those evening hours, the FCPA annually hosts several candlelight tours during the December holiday season. The programs present 18^(th)-century life at night and pull double duty by interpreting Christmas customs of several different periods during the house’s occupancy. The low light of evening heightens the senses, and in that soft light the rich and glossy stair rails and the silver displays shine, the blue and white china glows, and the aromas from the kitchen seem more inviting.