November 22, 2024
It’s the week before Thanksgiving. That means it’s time to think about holiday gifts, ready or not. If you’re a genealogist, it’s also a good time to think about sharing some of the genealogical wealth you’ve amassed.
It’s probably too late to whip up a family history book this year, but now might be a good time to begin planning that for next year. If you will be meeting with relatives over the holidays, plan to talk to your older cousins and aunts and uncles about their memories. Maybe they have photos they’d like to share with you. Possibly they remember the real reason Uncle Joe disappeared from the family way back when. You won’t know unless you ask.
For this year, you might consider some smaller genealogical gifts. Most genealogical software makes it easy to print out a family tree. If you’re going to print it yourself, you may want to limit the number of generations you include. If you want a larger tree, there are many places that will print one for you. Local stores such as Staples and Office Max are one option. Online sources abound as well. Most people are interested in their ancestors, and the tree may bring back memories. There’ll probably be an aunt or cousin who will tell you got it all wrong, but that’s okay. Just smile and ask them to help you fix it. You might learn about a twist in the family tree you didn’t know about before.
Another simple idea is to make family-themed Christmas ornaments. Stores like Hobby Lobby and Michael’s sell inexpensive ornaments that can be personalized with your own photos. You might choose to put pictures of the grandkids in them, but old pictures of ancestors are another possibility.
Recipe books are another genealogy-related idea. If you inherited grandma’s cookbook or her recipe box, you probably know exactly which recipes she used the most. They’re the ones that the cookbook opens to automatically and the ones spattered with blobs of oil or chocolate. Other members of the family may not ever make Grandma’s Norwegian meatballs, but they’ll probably enjoy remembering how Grandma made them. If you take the time to write a brief story about when and why Grandma made a recipe, it will be even more meaningful when you pass the recipe along.
If you’re not into do-it-yourself genealogy gifts, there are several websites that can do the work for you. You just need to gather some photos and pick an item you’d like them printed on. This might mean placemats, mugs, puzzles, blankets, Christmas cards and calendars or almost anything else that you can imagine. Snapfish.com and Shutterfly.com are two well-known companies, but you can find lots more online.
Older family members who are not very computer literate may even enjoy a scrapbook of old newspaper articles. One year I found that the local weekly newspaper from my hometown was online. I learned that my great grandfather had written a local column for the newspaper for over twenty years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Great grandpa tended to write about other members of our large extended family in those columns.
One year I printed out all the twenty plus years of those articles and put them in sleeves in a looseleaf for my dad. He was thrilled and spent the rest of that winter reading his grandfather’s articles. He told me it was the best Christmas present ever.
Genealogy Christmas gifts don’t need to be elaborate to be meaningful. Just spend some time thinking about your family and what they might like. I can promise you they’ll be like my dad who appreciated that simple binder of news articles more than another shirt, which was my usual default gift.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society