Candlelight Christmas to open holiday season in community
A variety of seasonal activities will be available.
HARMONY, Pa. -- Harmony's holiday season gets under way with the Harmony Museum's annual Candlelight Christmas from 2 to 8 p.m. Dec. 4.
The event includes holiday decorations, music, crafts vendors and refreshments.
The center of the National Historic Landmark District acquires a glow after sunset when luminaries are lighted in the diamond and in front of museum buildings.
Exhibit rooms in the museum building and Wagner House annex, as well as the nearby Ziegler log house, all decorated by volunteers, will retain their Christmas finery throughout the holiday season.
Craft sales, free refreshments and holiday music will enliven the museum's Stewart Hall, while the museum shop and other charming shops in Harmony provide more gift-shopping opportunities.
A $1 donation per adult is requested for admission to Candlelight Christmas. At 4 p.m. a landmark district walking tour will be offered for a $2 fee.
Area's history
Harmony, which retains the quaint architectural character of an old German village, is located on Pa. Route 68, just west of the Interstate 79 exit near Zelienople.
It is about 10 miles north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike exit at Cranberry, Pa. Route 19.
The area's recorded history began with a Delaware Indian village visited by young Virginia Maj. George Washington during his late 1753 mission to demand French withdrawal from British territory, sparking the French & amp; Indian War.
The war's first shot was fired at Washington nearby by a native allied with the French.
Pacifist German Lutheran Separatists founded Harmony late in 1804, and their communal, celibate Harmony Society soon gained international renown.
After their 1814 departure, area resettlement was led by Mennonites, also pacifists.
Additional aspects of local history interpreted by the Harmony Museum include pioneer life in a log house, an early 19th century boarding school for girls and the fine hunting and target percussion rifles made by Charles Flowers during the second half of the 19th century.