Come get ready for Christmas on Pearl Harbor Day

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.