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Though Rinaldi missed out on the Christmas Day crossing both his years due to the swollen river, he did cross in character during last year’s rehearsal. “He’s probably one of the better ones,” said his father, Ronald Sr. “Naturally, I’m going to say that.” Rinaldi had persuaded his father — who used to join him on the re-enactment circuit — to take his uniform out of mothballs and join him and Rinaldi’s 11-year-old son, Ronnie, also a re-enactor, this year.

WOODEN CANTEEN, KNIT CAP

Earlier yesterday, after the presents had been dispatched, Rinaldi, dressed in a black scuba-like long-sleeved shirt and yellow breeches, retreated with his son up to the bedroom. While Ronnie put on a vest over his loose white shirt and tan breeches, and buttoned the spats over his buckled shoes, Rinaldi donned the handsome yellow uniform, blue overcoat and black three-cornered hat. It’s the same uniform Rinaldi wore when he first started reenacting, down to the knife he carved from an old metal file and the wooden canteen on which he scorched “U States.”

“I don’t like to talk about this because it’s not manly,” Rinaldi said, reaching into his closet and pulling out an orange knit cap that reads “Liberty or Death.” Yes, he had made it himself: When he was a teen, he worked at the Old Barracks in Trenton, and he said the little old ladies who volunteered there taught him to knit. Rinaldi knew earlier in the week the weather might not cooperate with his ambitions, and he sounded philosophical about the turn of events. “I was Washington whether I crossed or not,” he said. “I wouldn’t have a problem passing on the torch and going back to being a soldier.”