Hmmm. My other half's very much into re-enactment and living history (which are separate things by the way!) and I enjoy doing the odd event as well. I get what was meant by the term 'authenticity Nazi', but it seems to me the point of re-enactment and LH is to re-create life from another time as accurately as possible. This is why, as Ruth said at the start of this thread, it's a boon to schools but it's also increasingly accepted as genuine historical research. I have a mate called Sean Jones who does a living history project at Kentwell every year. He's a bagpipe maker by trade, and a couple of years ago he decided to attempt to make a set of Brueghel-type pipes using only 16th century technology. As a result he learned God knows how much about Tudor instrument making that he could never have learned from written or drawn material. (The pipes worked by the way - they were just bloody loud!)

It seems that ren-faires (of which I have no direct experience) are about people who like dressing up, having a few drinks and having a good time, which is an entirely laudable and cool thing to do. For me, however, the problem would be if the content (ie - the clothes, music, etc) is presented as authentic when it isn't. Hasn't Hollywood re-written history enough?