London’s Fanshawe Pioneer Village will be providing a different type of holiday celebration this year, with the remembrance and reconstruction of a famous World War I incident.
The subject of the special event is the Christmas Truce, an unofficial ceasefire that occurred in December of 1914 that saw French, British and German soldiers lay down arms and, in some cases, even exchange gifts. The exhibit will bring visitors through four buildings, with presenters providing key supporting information on the war and the events leading up to the truce. The final stop will be at a replica of one of the war’s notorious trenches, where visitors can experience the conditions surrounding the Christmas Truce first-hand.
Fanshawe has previously hosted this exhibit successfully and is doing so again in partnership with the History Matters Association. The experience originally took place entirely after dark, but this year’s edition has added some afternoon slots before sunset.
The village aims to recreate the kind of rural communities that have since become urban areas like London North, and it typically also hosts 19th century-style markets and celebrations around the holiday season. Historical museums like this aim to offer a peek into the past, and how everything from aesthetics to everyday life was different a century or two ago. Graphic design is often used to recreate historical scenes for such exhibits.
The Fanshawe Pioneer Village exhibit on The Christmas Truce will take place on December 3 and 4 in multiple two-hour time slots.
