We’re heading into another holiday season. It’s Trick-or-Treating soon and then Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas, and the New Year’s follow at the snap of a finger.
If you’re a grandparent or parent with children ages grade school to adult, have you ever shared your older relatives holiday traditions with your children or showed them photos or videos?
It’s fun to look back and see how earlier generations gathered to cook, feast, and wrap presents. Some families wouldn’t have had too many, especially before and during World War II.
How do you capture these stories and use them?
Let’s get ideas from Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History and their tips for getting relatives to tell their stories and share their memories (the link is at the end of this post).
The first step is asking if they’d be willing to share and then getting the proper recording equipment. This could be your phone or laptop. It can be unnerving if they feel the spotlight is on them so you want them to get engrossed in their story telling.
Tip 1: Ask basic questions
Asking, “Where are you from?” or “Where did you grow up?” work quite well.
The questions are easy to answer and warms them up. Try to avoid asking questions with simple yes or no answers.
Here are other ideas:
“What was your favorite and least favorite foods during [holiday]?”
“What was trick or treating like for you?”
General questions like “How did you feel about … ?” or “What do you remember about … ?” are also good ways to get someone talking without feeling self-conscious.
Tip 2: Ask them to comment on photos
You may likely have printed photos, videos, slide shows or other older media that have a connection with some of your older relatives.
Ask them what they remember about the photo or video you have, or something related to what was happening then in their lives and community.
Once your relatives are talking, they’ll feel relaxed and you can ask them about stories or how they coped during the holidays if times were tough.
Tip 3: Listen
Good journalists and historians listen while observing. If you hear something that strikes emotion in them or you, then ask a follow-up question. It’s okay to go down a rabbit hole of discovery.
Now, what do you with the stories you’ve collected?
Store them permanently, safely
Now that you’ve recorded your stories, you can write them up and enter the text as notes or full stories in the cloud.
As a photo coach, I offer the services of FOREVER® and here’s why.
FOREVER® lets you digitize your old files and store them alongside your newest photos and videos.
Storage is permanent since the service is designed to last for a lifetime, plus 100 years and with a goal of being available beyond that time frame.
Tell family history stories in your files
But there’s another reason that FOREVER® is a powerful tool to use. You have space to share your family’s history and write up the stories you’ve recorded and the notes you’ve taken.
Your files are stored in your gallery, and you can organize them in albums. In the margins, there are fields to enter the date the photo was taken and custom name the file.
And there’s also room to write either a brief description or a full story about the photo, video, slide, handwritten note or other file.
Share notes and direct quotes from the relatives who you’ve interviewed and share their holiday traditions and other tales.
This way, you and your family can enjoy the stories but even more importantly, their historical accounts will be available for future generations.
What to share:
- Who’s in the photo or other file?
- Where is it?
- What are they doing?
- Why is this important to you, and to future generations?
- When was this taken?
Write like you talk
Don’t try to be clever or creative in your written description. Just tell the story and the creativity will come. Use direct quotes from the interview and write in ideas or observations that come to mind. You can always go back and edit in new details.
How far to go back
Researching your family’s history can be quite intriguing and a wonderful outlet. If you need help either getting started or overcoming roadblocks due to lost records or language barriers, get a consultation or in-depth help from FOREVER®’s professional genealogists.
I’ve enlisted their help to trace my family’s line back to the Civil War era and a friend, Rori Grosse, has traced her family’s lineage back to the 1500s in Germany.
What’s so fun is you’re looking back to connect the stories of your family’s history and using FOREVER® lets you preserve them for future generations in the next century and even beyond.
Need ideas for your family research?
If you want to dig into your family’s story and need ideas, let me know.
There are other key benefits you should know about FOREVER® like:
- You own your account
- Files are never compressed
- A one-of-a-kind industry guarantee.
Contact me and let me know of a good time to visit.
Also, check out my Events page to see other ways I can help.
If you’re on social media, follow me on Facebook and Instagram.
Here are links to more posts on researching your family’s history:
1 Tell your family’s story using a small number of photos
2 Research your family history and see if you’re descended from famous Americans