Historic Houses of Odessa holiday tours set through Dec. 31

For 200 years, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale of “The Nutcracker and The Mouse King” has enchanted readers, inspired composers and dancers and delighted audiences worldwide. This holiday season, from Tuesday, Nov. 15, to Saturday, Dec. 31, the Historic Odessa Foundation invites visitors to celebrate the bicentennial of this classic tale as the National Historic Register Wilson-Warner House is transformed into the home of the Stahlbaums on Christmas Eve, as well as story vignettes beautifully recreated throughout the 247-year old Wilson-Warner’s period rooms.

This classic story, written in 1816, about a girl named Marie (Clara in the ballet) who helps a wooden nutcracker defeat an army of mice is the inspiration for the annual literature-based Christmas exhibit at the foundation. For the past 30 years Historic Odessa has celebrated children’s literature by recreating scenes from the classics in one of its 18th-century museum houses. Visitors have been treated to the literary works of Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll, to name a few.

All of the Historic Odessa Foundation’s museum properties, collectively known as the Historic Houses of Odessa, are open and on display for the 2016 Holiday Season. School and family tours will be presented celebrating Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” through interpretive vignettes throughout the National Historic Register Wilson-Warner House (c. 1769). For more information, call 302-378-4119, or go to www.historicodessa.org. Admission to holiday tours is $10 for adults; $8 for groups, seniors and students; and HOF members and children under 6 are free.