Happy Holidays from the Greenbelt Museum

We hope you'll join us for our annual evening open house, Deco the Halls, on Friday, December 5, 7:30-9pm following the city's annual tree lighting. The house glows with vintage holiday decorations and the gift shop is freshly stocked with new merchandise! 

Our holiday decor includes items a typical family would have used between roughly 1937-1952 (the era that the Museum primarily interprets) including a vintage table setting, holiday cookie cutters, handmade aprons, greeting cards, boxes of early versions of holiday lights, and much more! 

As part of our installation, we display both a lighted tree and a menorah as Greenbelt's early residents were integrated in terms of religion. The goal of the planners was to have 63% Protestant, 30% Catholic, and 7% Jewish. Unfortunately, as a result of widespread segregation and local opposition to integration, all of Greenbelt's early residents were white. This would remain the case until the mid 1960s. See our website for more information.

Sometimes we're asked why we don't include other winter celebrations in the Museum's historic house display. We have not traditionally included artifacts reflective of the variety of other holidays that Greenbelters today celebrate such as Kwanzaa or Dongzhi, for instance, because the era upon which our collection is focused is 1937-1952. Celebrations such as those would not have taken place in Greenbelt during those years. However, we very much look forward to the completion of the education and visitor center next door to the museum house as that will provide an ideal space in which to highlight all Greenbelt’s incredible diversity!