Much thanks to Randy, Misha and Chuck for some great comments and thought-provoking observations. My own personal path to living history probably dates back to reading Bruce Catton’s marvelous trilogy about the Union Army of the Potomac back in the seventies. (Mr. Lincoln’s Army, Glory Road, and A Stillness at Appomattox)* I think it was the first time that I had encountered history written in a in such a readable manner. The books were real page-turners which made an era come alive that I had previously thought of mostly in the abstract.
Then, about a dozen years later, when my kids were all out of diapers, I took my family to Philippi for what was being advertised as some sort of celebration of the area’s Civil War history. There we encountered my first fully outfitted Rebel. A gentleman named Ernie, (can’t remember his last name) who was a city policeman, had gone to the trouble and expense to buy pretty much everything that at the time was felt to be period correct. I had an epiphany of sorts at that moment, as I was struck by how real that time and those people suddenly became. I was hooked!
To me, that is the value of reenacting and living history. You certainly get a great deal of personal gratification from it. Let’s face it, no one would do it if you didn’t. But, you also have an opportunity to make a difference in a way that the teacher in the classroom can’t, even if they are honestly trying. Even the Park Ranger, earnestly describing the movements of armies across fields and crashing into one another, cannot create the kind of visceral feeling that a kid gets from holding a musket (or a PPsh) and smelling the leather and the wool. It’s the difference between 2-D and 3-D. All these components are important and play a role.
Why is this important? I don’t want to sound trite, but I don’t think you can be an effective citizen if you don’t have some means of putting things into some sort of historical perspective. I’m not sure what they teach in public schools anymore. It’s possible that the teachers are just so overwhemed by trying to get through the day without a fight breaking out, or getting the beauty queens off their cell phones that they just put in the time and go to a bar after school. (I know an old reenactor who teaches in the local high school, and that is how he described his day to me. Of course we were in a bar at the time and he was pretty sloshed) I used to think that the History Channel could take up some of the slack. That was before it became the Doomsday Channel or the Ice Road Trucker/Axemen channel. What a lot of the crap on there anymore has to do with history is anyone’s guess.
Anyway, in a society that seems to value stupidity more and more (Jackass the Movie?) I think Living History fills, at least in some small way, a serious need. I will now get off my soapbox.
*If you are interested: Bruce Catton’s Civil War consists of all three books in one volume and is available at amazon.com
So, dear readers, why do YOU reenact?
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