Every Christmas, They Re-Row the Painting Everyone Drew

Every American who went through grade school has seen it: a boat full of soldiers pushing through ice, a general standing tall at the bow, a flag snapping in the wind. What most of them never learn is that a version of that exact scene still happens, for real, every single Christmas Day.

The Painting in Every Textbook

Emanuel Leutze painted "Washington Crossing the Delaware" in 1851, seventy-five years after the event it shows. The huge canvas, about 21 feet wide, now hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It has been reproduced in history books, parodied in cartoons, and copied by more schoolchildren with crayons than almost any other American painting.

Leutze got some details wrong. The flag in the painting is the Stars and Stripes, which was not adopted until 1777, a year after the crossing. The real Durham boats were also far larger than the ones in the painting, flat-bottomed cargo boats built to haul iron ore, not just a dozen standing men.

What Actually Happened on Christmas Night

On the night of December 25 to 26, 1776, General George Washington led about 2,400 Continental Army soldiers across the icy Delaware River from Pennsylvania into New Jersey.

The crossing was a desperate gamble. Washington's army had suffered defeat after defeat that year, and morale was collapsing. He needed a win before enlistments expired at the end of the year.

The soldiers loaded into the Durham boats, flat-bottomed cargo vessels normally used to haul iron ore, and pushed off into a river choked with drifting ice.

They landed in New Jersey, marched through the night, and surprised the Hessian garrison at Trenton the next morning, winning a battle that helped save the Revolution.

The Reenactment Nobody Expects

At Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania, staff and volunteers have been re-staging the crossing every Christmas Day since the 1950s.

Hundreds of reenactors in Continental military dress gather along the riverbank in the cold. Some play fife and drum. Others man reproduction artillery pieces.

Then a group climbs into replica Durham boats and rows across the same stretch of the Delaware River, recreating the pose from Leutze's painting as closely as the current can allow.

The crossing only happens if conditions are safe. Ice, high water, or dangerous currents have forced organizers to cancel the actual river crossing in past years, though the ceremonies and encampment go on regardless.

Still Going, 74 Years In

This December marks the park's 74th annual Christmas Day crossing. Free and open to the public, it now draws thousands of spectators who line both banks of the river to watch.

The painting most Americans only ever saw on a classroom wall is, for one afternoon a year, a living reenactment a short drive from Philadelphia.