Revolutionary holidays in Williamsburg
WILLIAMSBURG, Virginia (CNN) — Christmas walks into Colonial Williamsburg on boots, battle-dress soft soles padding across cobblestones in the dusk of December’s first Sunday.
Turning 50 in 2008, the modern Colonial Williamsburg Fifes and Drums field more than 100 players.
Tens of thousands of “guests,” as the city calls its tourists, fall to a hush when they hear a rhythmic click. More than 100 fife-and-drum artists are moving coolly, silently in 18th-century uniforms along lanes and pathways, striding in ghostly precision to the clicks of their drummers. They are eerily stone-faced youths, sturdily ignoring the modern masses pressing to glimpse them.
In the late 1700s, these teens might have been the first killed on fields of American Revolutionary battle. The noncombatant fifers and drummers were the communications units of their armies, ordering attacks, retreats and other maneuvers with their melodies and cadences.
Tonight, their command is a happy one. Their synchronized moves mean the annual Grand Illumination is starting in Williamsburg, and more than 25,000 visitors are reported on the streets to see them.
