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“Every spring, thousands of mountain residents gather in cemeteries for a decoration day event, coming together to remember and respect the dead by cleaning their graves and decorating the graves with flowers,” said Trevor Jones, curator at the Mountain Heritage Center. “Decoration day is both a religious event and a celebration of life where people pray, sing, share a meal, tell stories and reconnect as a community.”
In the Western North Carolina mountains, decoration days, often called ‘decorations,’ occur anytime from April through October, but most are held in May or June. Many residents attend multiple decorations throughout the year, Jones said.
Visitors who experience the exhibit at the Mountain Heritage Center will have an opportunity to learn about the tradition with hands-on activities such as making crepe-paper flowers, designing their own headstones, and listening to interviews with decoration day participants, Jones said.
One segment of the exhibit covers the decoration day tradition in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in particular the tradition as it is carried out on the north shore of Fontana Lake, he said.
The exhibit is based on a forthcoming book of the same title that was written by Alan Jabbour, a folklorist from Washington, D.C., and his wife, photographer Karen Jabbour. Alan Jabbour is former director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and Karen Jabbour took many of the photographs included in the exhibit.
The exhibit also draws upon a 2005 “North Shore Cemetery Decoration Project Report” prepared by Alan Jabbour, archaeologist Paul Webb and WCU associate professor of anthropology Philip E. Coyle.
The exhibit will be on display at the museum through May 31, 2010.
The Mountain Heritage Center, open to the public free of charge, is located on the ground floor of WCU’s H.F. Robinson Administration Building. The museum is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday year-round; from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday year-round; and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, June through October.
For more information about the museum’s programs and special events, call (828) 227-7129 or visit www.wcu.edu/mhc.
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Last modified: Friday, April 24, 2009