Holiday Open House

@ Museum of East Tennessee History
Where: 
East Tennessee History Center
When: 
Saturday, December 8, 2018 - 6:00am to Sunday, December 9, 2018 - 9:45am

Cookies and apple cider will warm the day at the East Tennessee Historical Society’s Holiday Open House on Saturday, December 8, from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Activities include lectures, storytelling, craft demonstrations and the sale of handmade items, free ornament and craft making for the kids, and holiday refreshments. Crafter Karen Micheletta will have a selection of her handmade items made from quilts to purchase, April Greer of Walnut Stump Arts will showcase her unique nature-inspired arts and gifts, and Amy Barrick of Mudroot Pottery will offer a sampling of handmade pottery and clay ornaments. Patrick Hollis of the Mabry-Hazen House will be on hand discussing food history and the newly reprinted Tennessee and Virginia Cookbook. A WWI living historian will share the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, a friendly ceasefire on the Western Front.

Visitors are invited to browse the ETHS Museum Store for a 10% discount on a great selection of traditional gifts, history books, and children's items. The 10% public discount is good for this day only. ETHS members receive a 10% discount throughout the year and 15% off throughout the month of December. Looking for the gift that gives all year? Pick up a gift membership and your loved ones will receive publications and special benefits throughout the year. 

Museum admission is free for the day. On display is a beautifully hand-carved crèche (above right) made in Germany and brought to East Tennessee by the immigrant Fickey family in 1883. Family legend indicates that it had origins in the Fickeys’ home district of Erzgebirge some 150 years before being brought to this country. Other exhibits currently on view include the feature exhibition A Home for Our Past: The Museum of East Tennessee History at 25, an East Tennessee Streetscape and Corner Drug Store, and Voices of the Land: The People of East Tennessee, a look at 300 years of history, from the Cherokee to the 1982 World’s Fair.

Holiday Open House events are free and open to the public from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. The Museum of East Tennessee is located at the East Tennessee History Center, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville. For more information, visit www.eastTNhistory.org or call 865-215-8824.