The soft glow of a historic holiday

Candlelight tours Friday at Lincoln Log Cabin

[November 29, 2012]  LERNA -- A Christmas holiday tradition that looks like it came straight off a greeting card can be experienced during the Christmas Candlelight Tours at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site near Charleston on Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Visitors are welcome to tour the Lincoln and Sargent Farms by candlelit paths to see how Christmas may have been observed by 19th-century Americans. At the Lincoln Cabin, the family will gather around the hearth and share the evening socializing, as was common with many farm families after the busy harvest season, all the while continuing to stay busy spinning wool, knitting and performing other small tasks.

Meanwhile, at the Sargent Farm, members of the family will celebrate the holiday with good food and simple decorations, with an emphasis on Christmas as a family holiday. Christmas as we know it today was not widely celebrated on the Illinois prairie; the Sargent family will represent a growing trend in the 19th century of those who chose to observe the holiday as a family affair. This was a break from some earlier traditions in which Christmas was a raucous holiday that in many ways rivaled New Year's celebrations of today.

Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, is an 86-acre pioneer farmstead that was the last home of Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's father and stepmother. It is located eight miles south of Charleston. For more information, call 217-345-1845 or visit www.lincolnlogcabin.org.

[Text from file received from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency]