Speakers: Heather Leah, historian, creator, and producer, WRAL Hidden History
Description: Did you know North Carolina has its very own Christmas town? Or that there's a 200-year-old Moravian bakery making the same gingerbread our great-great grandparents once ate? Have you ever seen the state's largest living Christmas tree? From holiday flotillas in the Atlantic to the old folk celebrations of Appalachia, North Carolina has small-town holiday traditions from the mountains to the coast. Heather Leah, historian and seventh-generation North Carolinian, shares historical tales of old-fashioned Carolina Christmases past.
Speaker bio: Heather Leah is a fifth-generation Raleighite and professional historian, who explores lost history often not found in mainstream history books. For nearly a decade of uncovering Hidden History, she's dug through the State Archives, explored underground tunnels and secret places, and interviewed long-time Raleighites for oral histories—and brought the photos and stories to all of us.