The holidays are a time when you may be able to see relatives whom you do not get to see frequently. Of course, that is a wonderful thing. As a genealogist, you may be tempted to try to get as much information as you can during the visits. You might even make an action plan of what you want to discuss and with whom.
I have discovered that unless there is some pressing research that you absolutely must do, those research questions and plans can be saved for email or telephone exchanges, or even writing letters. Holiday visits are a great time to catch up on family knowledge, for sure, but is may be more rewarding to leave the formalities aside and just see what comes up in conversation.
For example, over the course of the past couple of days, I learned a great many things from just being around my parents and other relatives. These may not be facts that will push my research into new and uncharted territory, but that’s okay. They are details that I am interested in; details that make my family’s history come to life. They are details that could also really help with writing stories of my family’s history, if I do that at a later point in time.
The pieces of information are somewhat random, but fascinating to me nonetheless. For one thing, I learned that a fabric ice cream cone ornament on my parent’s Christmas tree was made by my maternal grandmother. I also learned that my father and his older brother (and their parents) lived in a different house before moving to the place that I always knew as their family home.
Another interesting tidbit is that one of my aunts thinks that my youngest son, now nine months old, looks exactly like my father did when he was a baby. I see my extended family in Massachusetts about twice a year. Every time I see them I learn at least a few new, different, and exciting things about our family. What did you learn from your family this year?
Photo by cohdra on morguefile.com.