Over the Christmas break my family and I travelled to our favorite vacation spot, Colonial Williamsburg. Over the holidays the facades of the Historic Area are supposed to be wonderfully decorated, and wanted to experience this time of year first hand.

The decorations were beautiful, and the weather was so warm I didn’t even wear a coat much of the time. The only down-side was our under-estimating how crowded the resort would be. Much of the holiday celebrations take place at night and require tickets, but all the events we wished to attend were sold out. While our family will take “normal Williamsburg” any day of the week, missing out on those special presentations made the visit lose much of its “Christmas” flair as the historic presentations and tours inside the historic buildings aren’t decorated for Christmas. It wouldn’t be time appropriate, and the historic area is trying to recreate specific dates in history, none of which are December 25.

The decorations on the building facades do invoke a Colonial-era feel, using many materials which would have been common in that era. Turkey feathers, fruit, the pulp from pomegranates ¹, candles, and greens all festooned the historic buildings.

One, in particular, caught my eye. On the front door was a wreath which held a piece of parchment in it’s middle. Obviously I had to go read what the text said. It was very familiar.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

One of the decorators put the entire opening crawl for Episode IV on the door. This made me happy. So happy, in fact, I missed how each of the front windows on that particular house was a nod to the original trilogy. My wife actually pointed it out to me the next day ². I’ve embedded the full set below ³.

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Well done, unknown Williamsburg decorators. Well done.