ALLSINGTON, Pa.

THIS morning, James Gibson will wake up, dress himself in a Revolutionary War uniform and eat a breakfast of tea and cornmeal muffins.

"I eat what George Washington ate," he said. "It gets me into his head. It lets me become the man. Washington also liked ham and cucumbers."

In the quirky world of war re-enacting, Mr. Gibson, 52, has a coveted role. He acts out George Washington's crossing of the Delaware on Christmas morning. He plans to trod the banks of the river on the Pennsylvania side of Washington Crossing Historic Park with 87 other re-enactors and exhort his troops to fight. At 1 p.m., weather permitting, they will climb into flat bottom wooden boats and row to New Jersey. The event last year, which would have been the 49th such re-enactment and Mr. Gibson's first as General Washington, was canceled because of sleet and freezing rain.

"When I am at the crossing, I am surrounded by armed guards," he said, seated in his uniform on a period bench in his home. "People address you as General Washington. They salute you. You feel like you are really him. It's a hype. It's very exciting."

The crossing of the Delaware in 1776 led to the crucial victories in Trenton and Princeton and changed the course of the war for the Continental Army.

The re-enactment, however, is less an attempt to replicate a historical event and more an attempt to recreate a living tableau of the 1851 painting of the crossing by Emanuel Leutze. In this depiction, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, General Washington stands on a clear day in the prow of a boat with Old Glory flapping in the wind.

The actual crossing by 2,400 soldiers took place in driving sleet during the night. The flag was not created until seven months later. The troops marched nine miles downstream and surprised Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, killing 30 and capturing about 1,000. Mr. Gibson said he was a man consumed with the past, or at least the part of it that allows him to dress up as a soldier and play war. He has sunk thousands of dollars into war souvenirs, including uniforms dating back to the Spanish-American War, guns, bazookas, medals, flags, helmets, swords, knives, discharge papers. On the second floor of his house, parts of which date back to 1794, he has his war artifacts piled or displayed on mannequins in what he calls "the war room." It is hard to walk through the mounds of matériel.

By day he is the maintenance manager in the Kmart distribution center in Morrisville, Pa., but much of the rest of the time he is in muddy fields with other re-enactors pretending to be in battles that stretch from the Revolutionary War to World War II. He and other re-enactors spend weekends in a replica of a World War I trench built in a field in Newville, Pa., or driving around in a vintage World War II tank pretending to blow each other up.

"We have portrayed the Battle of the Marne and Belleau Wood," he said.

The cost of re-enacting later wars, however, is exacting.

"It is hard to maintain a Sherman or a halftrack in your garage," he said, "and then you have to buy the trailer to haul it. The guys who have these things have to have some means."

Mr. Gibson is married and has one son, Jason, who is a sophomore at the University of Delaware and who started as a regimental drummer and continues today. His wife, Janice, a math teacher, has lately begun to portray Martha Washington. She previously attended re-enactments as a camp follower.

"During Washington's time, they at first didn't want women in the army," he said. "But the men liked to have the women around. The women did the laundry and foraging. They did the nursing and washing. They were finally given half pay and half rations."

He often goes to local schools dressed as the general and answers questions.

Mr. Gibson had to rise through the ranks. He started out as a line soldier, which meant he often pretended to be shot when a re-enactment started and spent the rest of it lying motionless on the ground. But he loved dressing up in the uniforms, the attention to historical detail if not actual historical fact, and the camaraderie.

"It is exciting," he said. "You hear the guns go off. You see men in the line fall over and portray being shot. You smell black powder. The cannons are blazing. You don't get this from a book. It is like being in a fraternity."

He spent several years in a re-enactors' unit of the First Continental Regiment. He has been the commander for 10 years.

MR. GIBSON had to compete to become George Washington. He beat out five competitors last year. He is about Washington's height, 6-foot-3, and has, he said, also "moved as many as 500 men on the field against opposing forces."

In the competition, run by park officials, he had to recite Thomas Paine's "Crisis" and answer questions about Washington.

He has built a replica of an 18th-century tavern in his house and invites other re-enactors over to eat off the pewter.

Mr. Gibson, his hand on the hilt of his sword, stood in a room in his house he calls the Washington room with eight portraits of the first president on the wall.

"If Washington were looking down on me and judging me I feel I would make him proud," he said.