Christmas and Genealogy Searches

You may live close to your family or you may be farther away, take advantage of Christmas or Thanksgiving to visit and have a chat genealogy time. Yes, you will be able to visit and chat with cousins, aunts, uncles and possibly grandparents.

Depending where you live the weather can be cold and snowy. This is okay for you but makes it difficult for visitors, so make the most of your time with family.

Put film in the camera and take plenty of extra film along. Once you start taking pictures you won't want to stop to put in new film. Your camera is digital all the better. Take pictures of the elders, then have your children or their cousins picture taken with grandparents great aunts and uncles.

When the children are older, they will know that they once met their grandparents or great-grandparents because they have a photo showing them together. Take 3, 4 or 5 generations photos, do this at least once every year. A year makes a difference the children are taller and the elders have a little more gray in their hair.

You can't make it every year you live too far away, try to do this as often as you can. Bring along school pictures to share with family. Maybe a small album for grandparents and a photograph of you and your children for the great-grandparents. You want to have a chat genealogy time, bring along a few completed ancestry charts also known as pedigree charts to share. Also have family group sheets with you. Have blank ones to fill out by you at the chat, or have someone fill out for their family. If you have enough information before your visitation, create a sheet and fill out as much information beforehand.

This is a time when the elders will love to tell stories and to entertain the young children and probably a few adults. Usually they will be delighted when someone from a younger generation shows interest in their history and will be more willing to talk about "old times". So make the most of it. Also double check facts for accurate dates and places, for your relative may have embellish a little.

I have to tell you I only knew my mother's mother and my grandmother's mother, along with 2 brothers of my grandmother and a couple of her sisters. My grandmother was 1 of 11 children and she was the only one who moved away from home. It was only 100 miles or so, but when I was a child we did not do much traveling.

I never knew my father's parents but I did his brothers and sisters and a few cousins. Children today are lucky because people are living longer and they have a better chance of knowing great-grandparents and others relatives.

Whatever holiday you celebrate be it Christmas or Hanukkah or some other observant holiday, have a Christmas and genealogy searches time. Keep traveling the genealogy highway and enjoy the experience.

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