Tara Fischer

Staff Writer

Berlin’s Calvin B. Taylor House Museum will welcome residents and visitors to upcoming winter and holiday festivities.

The Taylor House, located at 208 N. Main Street in Berlin, will host holiday-themed events this weekend and throughout December for adults and kids alike. On Friday, Nov. 29, the museum will open its gift shop with fun and festive items, including Christmas decor and puzzles, during Ice Ice Berlin, where ice sculptures will be displayed downtown. It will also be welcoming visitors for candlelight tours. Per the facility’s website, “decorated as it would have been for a holiday gathering, the house will be decked out in its traditional finery.”

The museum is hosting its own sculpture for Ice Ice Berlin for the first time. The facility’s sponsored structure will be located at the corner of Main and Baker streets during the Nov. 29 event.

Tuesday, Dec 3, is the Shore Gives More Giving Tuesday. The program is a 24-hour online donation event that helps support local Eastern Shore nonprofits. Financial aid can be given to the museum by heading to www.shoregivesmore.org/organization/taylorhousemuseum or by swinging by the house from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. the morning of Dec. 3. The facility will provide donuts and “tech wizes” to assist those who would like to donate online. Taylor House President Melissa Reid said the money will be used to continue allowing the museum to tell the stories of Berlin.

The Taylor House will welcome kids and adults for two separate occasions on Saturday, Dec. 7. From noon to 3 p.m., children will get to make old-fashioned gingerbread and wassail and a pinecone feeder. Reid added that the museum will be decorated for Christmas, and officials have planned a scavenger hunt for the kids.

Later that night, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., the facility is hosting a new event called Sip and Shop. Vendors will be present, as will special guest speaker Joyce White of the Annapolis Hammond Harwood House. White is a food historian who will present how holidays were celebrated when the house was built in the 1830s. According to Reid, the guest has created a fake dessert course to highlight the cuisine from the 1800s.

White will also be selling her book, “Cooking Maryland’s Way: Voices of a Diverse Cuisine,” which depicts food and its preparation methods from Maryland’s early cultural influences, including Native Americans, African Americans, Germans, and British.

According to White’s website, “voices of key individuals who shaped Maryland’s early culinary history are resurrected. They include those of indigenous Marylanders, African Americans such as Sybby Grant, Agnes Moody, Lucy Smith, and Joseph Peterson, and German immigrants such as Shinah Solomon Etting. In sharing their stories and those of others, this volume pays tribute to the legacy of early Maryland’s skilled culinary artisans.”

“[White] is a wealth of information,” Reid said. “We learned much about how food would have been served in the 1830s. The Covington’s who built the Taylor house and the enslaved people who would have provided all the meals, she told us.”

The historian has been featured on television shows like State Plate with Taylor Hicks, Eatin’ the Chesapeake for MPT, CBS News Sunday Morning, and America the Bountiful.

Forgotten 50 Distilling will also offer a handcrafted holiday beverage at the Sip and Shop event.

On Wednesday, Dec. 11, and Dec. 18, the museum will offer candlelight tours beginning at 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Reid said the events will have an “emphasis on kids.”

The museum president noted that the holidays provide a special opportunity to represent the facility.

“The house is so beautiful,” she said. “You don’t get to see something by candlelight often. It’s so fun to use the holidays to redo [the museum], and it’s a way to represent the Taylor House. People love to see things decorated for the holidays.”

“It helps us tell Berlin stories in a different way,” Reid continued.

The events, sans the Giving Tuesday donations, are free to enter. However, donations are welcome.

“Any money spent at the museum by the public and visitors goes back into new exhibits and updating old exhibits,” Reid said. “Any money goes right back to helping us tell the stories of Berlin.”