In a church’s Christmas Eve candlelight service, the whole sanctuary glows from the small flickers of individual candles. Edenton’s annual Christmas Candlelight Tour is like that. It’s only possible because individual homeowners turn on their lights and open their doors.

“Everybody is all in on this idea that it takes a group effort to keep historic preservation going,” says Sam Dixon. He and his wife, Gray, own Beverly Hall, a stately 1810 Federal-style house that’s been on the tour countless times.

Built in 1810, Beverly Hall will be included on Edenton’s Christmas Candlelight Tour this year. The Federal-style home has been on the tour many times. photograph by Joshua Steadman

Sam decks their halls the same way every year, just like he did as a child growing up at Beverly. He goes to the woods and harvests greenery from the heart-shaped smilax vine. When he gets home, he hangs it everywhere: over the mirrors and atop the bookshelves, framing the portraits, draping the staircase, and gracing the mantel. “If you’re a 15-year-old who wants to go swing on vines out in the woods, it can be a little enterprise,” Sam says with a laugh. “When people come through, if they grew up here, they immediately recognize the smilax. It’s part of our culture.”

Sam and Gray Dixon welcome tourgoers into Beverly Hall. photograph by Joshua Steadman

As twilight begins to blanket the neighborhood, 2,000 or so ticket holders fill West King Street beyond the Dixons’ Victorian gardens. Neighbors greet neighbors and reintroduce each other to out-of-town family. Friends share blessings — recent proposals, new babies, holiday travel plans. They’ve gathered, once again, for an Edenton holiday tradition: the candlelight tour.

In the quiet of their home, Sam and Gray light candles — real ones, of course — in every downstairs window. “There’s something about rooms lit by candlelight that makes you feel like you’re in a different time,” Sam says. That is the magic of this historic coastal town.

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The sun has barely begun its descent as Alexis Tobias-Jacavone, a historian with the Edenton Historical Commission, greets guests at the Penelope Barker House Welcome Center. The home overlooks Edenton Bay and holds the town’s 300 years’ worth of history — a fitting launchpad for an event hosted by the historical commission.

As the circa-1782 building’s rooms fill with wall-to-wall visitors, Tobias-Jacavone can feel the energy that pulses from the former home of Penelope Barker, who was one of 51 area women who signed a statement supporting boycotts in response to the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773.

The candlelight tour hasn’t always been the event it is today. When it started 43 years ago, it was a small affair — “just a handful of houses and a couple hundred people,” Tobias-Jacavone says. “The fact that all these people come to our small town to appreciate what we have to offer, and they’re so happy. It’s a real energy, the highlight of their year,” she says. Now, it’s an event that sells out of tickets by the end of October.

From the Penelope Barker House, tourists set off on foot to the featured neighborhood, which rotates each year. This time, the tour winds through the west side of town, near the waterfront. “Part of the downtown historic district was planned back in 1712, when North Carolina’s Colonial government decided to establish a courthouse in Edenton, or ‘Ye Towne on Queen Anne’s Creek,’” Tobias-Jacavone says. “It was laid out on a grid, so it’s walkable and easy to navigate.”

Christmas decorations welcome guests photograph by Joshua Steadman

Sometimes, Santa makes an appearance on the candlelight tour. The Edenton Baptist Church has been known to open its sanctuary for a handbell choir performance. Last year, the Kadesh A.M.E. Zion Church choir sang Christmas hymns at the Masonic Lodge. Notes of “Silent Night” rang out into the streets, drawing passersby to join in for a hymn or two before moving on to their next stop.

Joy fills the air. “Some people are looking for decorating inspiration,” Tobias-Jacavone says, “some people love seeing the architecture, but for everyone, it’s an opportunity for good cheer.”

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Sam was away at college when his parents helped organize the original candlelight tour. After he graduated and worked in Raleigh for a few years, he and Gray and their oldest daughter moved back to Beverly Hall, Sam’s childhood home.

At the same time, his parents moved from the main house into a backyard building they call the library. “They told me, ‘Look, you have to open this place when anybody asks. If you don’t enjoy it, and you don’t want to share it, there’s not much need to have it,’” Sam recalls.

During the tour, good cheer is spread throughout the community in horse-drawn carriage rides, caroling, and general good-heartedness. photograph by Joshua Steadman

Like Sam’s parents, the Edenton Historical Commission appreciates the value of its town’s structures. Proceeds from the candlelight tour go toward keeping the Barker House open. The EHC is also involved in restoration efforts, like that of the Kadesh A.M.E. Zion Church, which was ravaged by Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

Sam points to the 1758 Cupola House, originally built by a land agent for the Earl of Granville during the Colonial Period, as an example of a historic preservation success. In 1918, after the house had fallen into disrepair, “the Brooklyn Museum came to Edenton in the dark of night and bought all the interior woodwork,” he says. “When we started the candlelight tour 40 years ago, we were still trying to keep a roof on the Cupola House.”

Scenes that feel plucked from a Dickens’s novel unfold throughout Edenton’s downtown during the Christmas Candlelight Tour. photograph by Joshua Steadman

Now, after 105 years, the Cupola House Association has signed an agreement to uninstall the house’s original woodwork from the Brooklyn Museum and bring it home. “I’m so excited, sometimes I can’t sleep at night,” Sam says. “If you have a little Colonial town like we do, surrounded by fields and water, it is worth protecting. Everybody is all in on this idea that it takes a group effort to keep historic preservation going. Everybody plays a part. This just happens to be our part.”

To learn more about the Edenton Christmas Candlelight Tour, visit ehcnc.org/events/christmas.