Holiday magic is lighting up Townsend this December.
“We want to shine a bright light on our community and our history,” said Francis Graffeo, CEO of the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center. “We do that by telling the stories of the people who made the Southern Appalachians their home.”
Christmas in the Village takes place on Fridays and Saturdays in December, with holiday decorations, crafts, treats and living history presentations. The event is open from 5:30-8 p.m. on Dec. 5, 6, 12, 13, 19 and 20.
While it’s cold and dark outside, Graffeo said, “It’s warm and cozy, here. We’re illuminating our indoors with a warm glow and highlighting the stories of the mountain people.”
The Heritage Center isn’t just about “boring museum talk,” he added. “We’re bringing the stories to life. We’re going back in time.”
One of the people taking visitors into the past is Donna Stinnett, a volunteer reenactor with the Heritage Center. “I love to see their faces light up!” she said of her visitors. A retired teacher with 49 years experience working with special education students, Stinnett believes in hands-on learning. “That’s the best way to have it stick in your mind,” she said.
She loves Christmas in the Village and has a few surprises planned, so even returning visitors will find something new. Stinnett’s specialty is hearth cooking, and she loves demonstrating recipes and techniques used by the mountain people of the past two hundred years. For Christmas, she’ll be making shortbread, a favorite treat of the past (and the present).
The hardscrabble mountain people loved shortbread, Stinnett explained, because it was made from the leftover bread dough. “They added butter to the dough, to make it crumbly instead of having that stretchy characteristic,” she explained. The resulting cookies are called “bread” because, in the old days, sweets were taxed, but not bread. “So they got around the tax that way,” she chuckled.
Life was different for the Southern Appalachian folks of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Stinnett said, and so was Christmas. For some, the holiday wasn’t a big occasion; her own paternal grandparents didn’t have a Christmas tree or much in the way of celebration. “They’d go out on Christmas Day and shoot off a shotgun, just once,” she said. “And then it was just everyday stuff after that.”
Christmas in the Village will be anything but “everyday stuff,” but she hopes to bring that historical perspective nonetheless. For instance, Stinnett will show some of her antique toy collection, so children can see what the youngsters of the past had to play with. She recalled making doll beds out of wooden cigar boxes. “We’d glue wooden spools on the bottom, and then cut off the lid to make the headboard and foot,” she said. She’ll bring one of those doll beds to show. Crafts like that not only demonstrate the favorite toys of olden days, but also the necessary habits of recycling and thriftiness.
“We didn’t throw anything away,” she said. From candle stubs to wood shavings, everything had a use—and a re-use.
In contrast to the sometimes-lavish gifts of today, she said, Southern Appalachian children of the past would be thrilled to receive an orange as their main gift. “That’s surprising to children (today),” she said. In times before refrigerated shipping, however, fruits were a rare treat in midwinter.
Other reenactors will be on hand during Christmas in the Village to bring all aspects of mountain culture to life. Graffeo said that the celebration will feature not only Stinnett’s hearth cooking and household demonstrations, but also blacksmiths, weavers, spinners, hunters and more.
Visitors can enjoy hot chocolate, hot cider, kettle corn and other treats. Children can make their own rag dolls, or add their names to paper loops that decorate the Center’s Christmas tree. And, throughout the celebration, there will be music.
“Music is such an important part of culture,” said Graffeo, whose own background is in music. “We look for opportunities to expand our storytelling through music.”
The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center takes seriously its mission of “telling the stories of the Southern Appalachians through the centuries,” Graffeo said. He and his team of staff and volunteers are excited to bring those stories to life in various ways.
For example, the Center is expanding its work with Native Tribe heritage, as well, Graffeo said. “We take that very seriously.” They are adding representatives from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to the Board of Directors to ensure those efforts are balanced and authentic.
The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center is located at 123 Cromwell Drive, Townsend, just off East Lamar Alexander Parkway (about a mile before the National Park entrance). Normal hours are Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. These hours have been extended for Christmas in the Village: 5:30-8 p.m. Admission for the Christmas event costs $15 for teens and adults (over 12), $10 for children ages 3-12, and free for children under 3.
In addition to the Christmas event, the Center is already looking ahead to fun activities throughout the coming year, including a commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in July 2026. Find more information on their events calendar.
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