By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
Staff Writer
BATH -— The kitchen of the Bonner House at the Historic Bath State Historic Site provided a warm respite from the rain and cold wind for visitors to the site’s annual Christmas open house Sunday while a tent provided shelter for those seeking a quaff of freshly pressed apple cider.
For the second weekend in a row, rain and wind put a damper on holiday celebrations in Beaufort County, including the Bath event and the Aurora Christmas parade.
But despite the bad weather, visitors from as far away as Charlotte were drawn to the open house to experience Christmas as it was celebrated in Colonial America.
Guided by staff and volunteers dressed in period attire, visitors experienced, in the words of Bea Latham, assistant site manager, “sweets for the ear” at the Palmer-Marsh House, where they heard Colonial music performed on 17th- and 18th-century instruments, and “sweets for their insides” at the Bonner House, where they sampled gingerbread cooked over an open fire and freshly pressed apple cider.
The event, free to the public, ushered in the holidays by highlighting the decorations, food and sounds of Bath before Christmas trees and colored lights were introduced into holiday celebrations.
The 1751 Palmer-Marsh House featured Colonial-era music performed by Lorraine Hale of New Bern and Donald Shiffler of Kinston, members of the Ad Hoc Players. The 1830 Bonner House featured authentic cider-making and gingerbread-baking exhibits. the 1790 Van Der Veer House, used as an exhibit building for the site, featured decorations.
Visitors were invited to tour the historic structures which encompass the site and gain an appreciation of the simpler ways of decorating and celebrating the holidays — and the hard work that was involved in bringing those celebrations to life — during the early days of the nation, Latham said.
“It gives visitors a different feeling for Christmas,” she said.
For the fourth year, Henry Tripp manned the cider press, the center of attention for groups of visitors.
“It’s a lot of hard work,” Tripp said of the two-step process involved in manually grinding and pressing a box of apples into a small bucket of cider.
One of those sampling Tripp’s efforts Sunday was Heidi Souza, organist at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, who stopped by on her way home after church to attend the open house.
“I enjoy having the chance to talk with everybody,” she said.
Meanwhile, site employee Robin Jackson cooked gingerbread over an open fire while her daughter, Sarah, cut the baked gingerbread into squares for visitors to sample.
“There’s a lot of trial and error involved,” she said, as she demonstrated how to remove the embers from the top of an iron pot so she could check the bread for doneness.
Depending on a family’s wealth, gingerbread was a traditional Christmas treat in Colonial America, Jackson said.
Some volunteers and staff members were concerned Sunday that the bad weather would keep visitors away from the event, but most of them were optimistic that the event would be a success.
“We certainly has had different types of weather over the years,” Latham said. “We are keeping our fingers crossed.”