Illinois Association of Museums - Honoring Lost Traditions – Museums as Celebrations of Holiday History

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Honoring Lost Traditions – Museums as Celebrations of Holiday History

15 Jun 2025 6:35 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

By: David Bellm, Illinois Association of Museums Volunteer

As public engagement evolves in the modern age, museums are increasingly positioning themselves as social touchstones rather than just buildings that display artifacts. At the core of that is creating experiences — making visitors truly feel something and applying that to help them find deeper understanding. Accordingly, holiday programming for museums is transitioning from festive embellishment to meaningful interpretation. This change allows museums to transcend ornamentation to honor lost traditions, customs, and narratives that have disappeared from the public’s collective memory.

These efforts can have profound benefits. Psychologists and cultural scholars note that revisiting customs and practices from bygone eras isn’t just about the warm, fuzzy feelings of nostalgia; it can deepen a sense of stability, identity, and connection. “Holiday traditions are an important part of building a strong bond between family and our community,” writes Michele L. Brennan, Psy.D., of PsychCentral.com. “They give us a sense of belonging and a way to express what is important to us.”

This can be especially powerful during times of uncertainty and unrest. By recovering and sharing seasonal traditions, museums reinforce the emotional and social fabric that makes holidays meaningful to begin with. Such a shift in focus can result in holiday events that are rich, resonant celebrations of cultural history that go beyond just mere entertainment.

Museums as Cultural Memory-Keepers

Fundamentally, museums are stewards of memory. This poses both a challenge and an opportunity. Popular holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving are widely observed, but only in a very narrow sense. Their contemporary forms often have little in common with their historic or cross-cultural origins, which have long since fallen out of the public’s collective memory. At the same time, however, museums are well-equipped to reintroduce, reconstruct, or re-emphasize lost traditions, bringing them to entirely new audiences.

But it isn’t about resisting change or clinging to nostalgia. Instead, this kind of programming should focus on contextualizing holidays within the wider currents of social, political, and economic history. The holiday traditions commonly celebrated now didn’t spring out of someone’s imagination fully formed — they evolved, shifted, and were adapted to suit the needs, expectations, and tastes of different generations. Museums can show this evolution to visitors, giving them new perspectives on familiar traditions.

Image Credit: Pexels - Clement-Proust

Designing Immersive, Historically Grounded Events

When planning holiday events, it can be a fine line between engagement and interpretation. Programming should use experience as a means of educating. For example, a winter festival portraying European Yuletide customs could include live demonstrations of traditional foods, storytelling, and historical dress. The more hands-on and participatory, the better. This allows visitors to experience for themselves the social functions of those customs and draw their own connections to contemporary practices.

The process should, of course, begin with meticulous research, using whatever sources are appropriate, including archives, oral histories, and ethnographic accounts. From this, historically accurate representations can be created, with the aim of representing both the tradition and the context in which it was created. Ideally, curators and education teams should seek out community members who are still practicing such traditions — albeit likely in some evolved or adapted form. When such individuals can be brought into the process, the authenticity, nuance, and living relevance they bring can add tremendous depth to the end results.

Image Credit: Pexels - Zsolt Bodnar Hungarian Easter Watering Festival

Reconstructing the Ephemeral

Although many holiday traditions are centered around objects that can be interpreted, many lost traditions are ephemeral in nature. Elements such as songs, rituals, dances, and meals tend to leave little behind in terms of artifacts. This presents unique challenges.

In such instances, museums need to find creative ways to bring these traditions to life and provide sensory engagement for visitors. Any means of introducing sounds, smells, tactile senses, or movement can be effective for this. For example, you could set up hands-on workshops on historical cookie baking, candle-making, or communal folktale readings. Or you can use digital tools, such as QR codes that lead to archival recordings or augmented reality features.

Image Credit: Pexels - Natalia Goryaeva

Evaluating Contemporary Resonance

Although historical accuracy and experiential immersion are important, relevance is equally vital. No matter how profound or compelling your content is, visitors are most engaged when they can easily and quickly see the connection between past and present. For example, programming exploring the winter celebrations of immigrant families in the early 20th century can be compared and contrasted with those of our own, approximately 100 years later. Or, a New Year’s program that highlights the holiday’s traditional sense of renewal and hope can show how that sentiment has evolved and changed over the years, and what New Year's means to people today.

Traditions in Practice: How Museums Are Bringing the Holidays to Life

Throughout the world, museums are finding innovative ways to bring seasonal traditions to life. Here are some strong examples of what museums large and small are doing. Worth noting is the fact that some of these efforts are virtual, some are live interpretations, and others are presentations of artifacts that highlight the deeper meaning and context of what they originally represented.

To honor both Saint Patrick’s Day and Women’s History Month, the Tenement Museum in New York City presented a virtual tour titled “The Moore Family.” It explored the life of an Irish immigrant family living in New York in the 1860s, providing a vivid look at how Irish Americans preserved cultural pride while navigating the challenges of life in a diverse and often hostile city.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Massachusetts brings the 17th-century origins of Thanksgiving to life through costumed interpreters, historic homes, and traditional recipes. In doing so, the museum goes beyond the textbook story of Thanksgiving, reflecting on Native American histories, colonial legacies, and the shifting meanings of gratitude.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City celebrates the legacy of Hanukkah by featuring its towering silver menorah from the Moldovan Family Collection. The museum focuses attention on this artifact as a means of telling the story of the historic Jewish struggle for religious survival.

The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago celebrates the winter holidays with its beloved “Christmas Around the World” exhibit, where more than 50 decorated trees showcase holiday traditions from across the globe. A Christmas tradition in its own right, the exhibit began in 1942 with just one tree. Today, it features a forest of more than 50 trees that volunteers decorate to represent holiday traditions worldwide.

The Milwaukee Public Museum’s “Virtual European Village Alive!” program brings to life the holiday traditions brought to America by European immigrants. With videos and interactive features, the exhibit presents traditional customs such as German gingerbread, Italian nativity scenes, Polish oplatek wafers, and more. By blending cultural and ethnic roots of celebrations, this virtual experience showcases how traditions continue to influence American holiday celebrations.

Each of these programs exemplifies how museums can refocus holidays into opportunities for education, connection, and cultural preservation. But these examples barely scratch the surface. Ultimately, the ways that museums can bring holiday traditions to life are essentially unlimited.

Image Credit: Pexels - OG Productionz

Toward a Living Heritage

Museums have a unique opportunity to lead a cultural renaissance centered around holiday traditions. This is especially true with traditions that have been forgotten, overlooked, or misunderstood. By bringing these vital experiences to life, museums can offer audiences more than the usual trappings and baubles of the holidays. Celebrating cultural history in our events and programming can make holidays not just festive, but transformative. In doing so, we honor not only the past but the present, and the vast possibilities of tradition reborn.

Sources and Additional Information:

PsychCentral

“Why Holiday Traditions Might Be More Important Than You Think”

https://psychcentral.com/blog/balanced-life/2013/11/why-holiday-traditions-might-be-more-important-than-you-think#2

Discoverymuseum

“Seasonal Festivals in Museums and Parks: From Halloween Nights to Christmas Wonders”

https://www.discoverymuseum.com/seasonal-festivals-in-museums-and-parks-from-halloween-nights-to-christmas-wonders/

Looking Back, Moving Forward in Museum Education!

“The History of St. Patrick’s Day and How Museums Are Celebrating”

https://lookingbackmovingforwardinmuseumeducation.com/tag/holidays/

Entertainment Designer

“How Museums Are Celebrating the Holidays”