Abingdon Museum is celebrating Christmas with an array of the historic, the fun and the bizarre, writes SYLVIA VETTA

Mince pies, Queen Elizabeth I, pico-pipes and rollerblading are all features of a Christmas Show at Abingdon Museum. Lauren Gilmour, the curator, will provide the food, the Oxford Drama Wardrobe Collection the costume for the Tudor monarch, and the Bate Collection in Oxford is lending the pico-pipes. But the rollerblading?

Simon Coates, the director of Abingdon Touring Theatre, assures me rollerblades are essential to celebrate December 25 in modern-day Venezuela.

Abingdon County Hall is home to the town's museum. This attractive building was completed in 1682 under the supervision of Christopher Kempster, who was one of Christopher Wren's masons at St Paul's Cathedral. Although the identity of the architect is not certain, it is Grade-I listed and its fine proportions are in the style of Wren.

Lauren said: "Oxfordshire Museum Service's collection from Christmas Past features Victorian, Edwardian and 20th-century cards and cake decorations, toys, gifts, tins and spices for creating the Christmas cake, pudding and pies, recipes and sometimes the food itself."

The festive mince pies are the first ingredient but what about the Queen?

"On display are costumes intended for a series of historical personalities, including Samuel Pepys, whose Christmas celebrations will surprise you, and fictional characters from Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast and Aslan's cloak from a Dragon School production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are on loan from the Oxford Drama Wardrobe Collection."

The collection of clothing was started in the 1930s by Beatrice Saxon-Snell and under Alex Graham has grown to 4,500 items including original historic garments. At least one of its regal pieces will be on display in Abingdon.

Hugo Brunner, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire and Patron of the Wardrobe, said: "It is a unique resource of which Oxfordshire can be justly proud."

Music, of course, as well as the theatre, feature in many people's festive entertainment. From the Bate Collection has come eight rare instruments. That accounts for the pico-pipes but also for a strange instrument, the harp-lute-guitar, and a serpentine used to accompany early choirs reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's woodlanders wassailing around the village.

As for the famous diarist, curator Lauren Gilmour said "On one occasion his wife's black eye meant they had to cry off an invitation to Christmas festivities at the home of Pepys' superior officer's."?

That still leaves the rollerblading. This is where the Abingdon Touring Theatre comes into the picture. Actors Ben Revell and Amy Standish will be in the museum between 1.30pm and 3.30pm every day between December 27 and 31. They will entertain visitors with a cabaret of unusual ways people celebrate in other parts of the world - including rollerblading to church in Venezuela! To outsiders some of our customs may seem strange. Some years ago I took an American friend to a dress rehearsal of our village pantomime. While I enjoyed joining in with "he's behind you", my friend was completely mystified as to why anyone pays to see this entertainment.

Simon Coates, who founded Abingdon Touring Theatre two years ago, said of their performance: "We are all in the 18-25 age group. Performers are either gap-year students or recent drama school or university graduates. For most this is their first experience of the professional theatre. Only two are full time so I describe ATT as a 'rolling company'.

"Last year we travelled around the county with productions of Talking Heads by Alan Bennett and Aesop's Fables. Our 2008 programme begins in Thame on January 17 with John Godber's Teechers."

This is only the second exhibition in the Abingdon Museum I have reviewed, the first being their Swinging Sixties exhibition. Mounting shows along side the permanent collections poses a problem. The elegant building has changed little since the 17th century and the museum is applying for a Heritage Lottery grant to enable it to fulfil functions for the 21st century. The proposal is to glaze in the arcade and create lift access to the magnificent first-floor Sessions Hall.

The exhibition continues until January 9. Entry is free. There are also family activities in the gallery December 27 and 28 and January 2-5, and from December 27-30 is The Night after Christmas with Oxfordshire Touring Theatre.