Come get ready for Christmas on Pearl Harbor Day – Dec 7
November 20, 2024
December 7 will always be the “date which will live in infamy,” as President Franklin Roosevelt put it. And we will always remember. But on this Pearl Harbor Day, we’ll be looking toward a happier date – December 25.
Well, at least somewhat happier – because the subject is Christmas as celebrated in combat areas, far both in physical and emotional distance from “Home for the Holidays.” War is undoubtedly hell, but it’s been a military tradition since the beginning of American – and South Carolinian – history to pause and celebrate the joys that men knew in their faraway homes with their families.
The special Saturday program will be called “Christmas in the Trenches.” It will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and admission will be free.
On that Saturday – Dec. 7, 2024 – the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum and living history re-enactors of the American Italian Military Society will be showing you what it was like on the battleground and the home front.
In the atrium at the entrance of the museum at 301 Gervais St. in Columbia, you will find living tableaux depicting the make-do celebrations that occurred during:
• The Revolutionary War – From Valley Forge to the Snow Campaign, right here in South Carolina.
• The Civil War – See what it was like during Yuletide for thousands of men who had never left their home counties and now had been scattered across the nation.
• The Spanish-American War – Depicted with a scene from Camp Wetherill in Greenville.
• The First and Second World Wars – Both Over There and at home.
• Vietnam in the Christmas of 1968.
Plus scenes from the decades of the Cold War and later. And there will be activities for the kids, too, such as coloring pages.
About the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum
Founded in 1896, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is an accredited museum focusing on South Carolina’s distinguished martial tradition through the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, the War on Terror, and other American conflicts. It serves as the state’s military history museum by collecting, preserving, and exhibiting South Carolina’s military heritage from the colonial era to the present, and by providing superior educational experiences and programming. It recently opened a major new exhibit, “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina and the Vietnam War, 1965-1973.” The museum is located at 301 Gervais St. in Columbia, sharing the Columbia Mills building with the State Museum. For more information, go to https://crr.sc.gov/.
