Make Your Holidays Historic at The History List.

Lee Wright at The History List has developed a clever interactive calendar for the holidays which highlights events at historic sites around the country with changing images and sounds wrapped in an attractive bright red package.  It’s fun to play with it to find what’s hidden underneath each date and the best part is that any historic site or history organization can participate.  So far, it includes a Victorian Christmas at the Ramsey House, a whiskey tasting at Jefferd’s Tavern, and a holiday masquerade at Tryon Palace.  If you’d like to include your event, Lee provides instructions for participating via History List or Facebook.

December’s calendar is part of The History List’s, “Make this Holiday Historic” campaign, however, you can include events from the rest of the year as well.  The History List is Lee Wright’s effort to create a one-stop place for history lovers to find places and events happening near them, whether at home or on the road, as well as provide a convenient, easy-to-use online calendar for historic sites, museums, and organizations.

If any of you have tried to create an online calendar for your website or blog, you know it’s ridiculously complex and difficult for both you and your visitors.  The History List may be a serious solution for a single searchable, sortable calendar that can be shared with your members, fans, the public, and the press.  If you are a history-related group or organization, see if this free web-based platform can help publicize your events, sites, and exhibits.  The list of eligible participants is enormous–state and local historical societies, history museums, walking tour operators, historic sites, reenactor groups, preservation organizations, house museums, living history museums, sailing ship operators, national associations, cities and towns, government agencies and commissions, and genealogy organizations.  I met Lee at the AASLH annual meeting in Salt Lake City a couple months ago and he seems to be a smart digital entrepreneur who’s serious about helping historic sites get the most out of social media and the Internet, so if this is something you are exploring, you’ll want to check out The History List.