Jen's Genealogy Pages

Prompt: What songs did your family listen to during Christmas? Did you ever go carolling? Did you have a favorite song? We used to listen Christmas music through much of the month of December. There were the more ‘religious’ songs – Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Away in a Manger – and the more […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: Did your family attend religious services during the Christmas season? What were the customs and traditions involved? As a young child we attended church fairly regularly and went to church during the Christmas season. I don’t actually remember any sort of pageants or much at all about the services from way back then. We […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: How did your family handle Christmas Shopping? Did anyone finish early or did anyone start on Christmas Eve? When I was a child, my mother did the bulk of the Christmas shopping to ensure us kids and my father had presents and filled stockings. Early on, my father would be the only one buying […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: Did you have one? Where did you hang it? What did you get in it? Do you have any Christmas stockings used by your ancestors? My mother had handmade all of our stockings. They were red with a white band at the top with our names written on in green. She had not made […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: Did you like fruitcake? Did your family receive fruitcakes? Have you ever re-gifted fruitcake? Have you ever devised creative uses for fruitcake? I don’t think I would consider myself a huge fan of fruitcake, but I have always liked my mother’s. When I mentioned the topic of today’s prompt, she told me that the […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: Did you or your ancestors travel anywhere for Christmas? How did you travel and who traveled with you? Do you remember any special trips? We didn’t travel a great distance for Christmas. When I was young, all the family was in the same city. We’d usually do Christmas Eve with my father’s side of […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: Did your family ever volunteer with a charity such as a soup kitchen, homeless or battered women’s shelter during the holidays? Or perhaps were your ancestors involved with church groups that assisted others during the holiday? My children are still too young to really understand volunteering with a charity but it’s something I would […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: Did your family or friends also celebrate other traditions during the holidays such as Hanukkah or Kwanzaa?  Did your immigrant ancestors have holiday traditions from their native country which they retained or perhaps abandoned? My family and friends, for the most part, celebrate just Christmas. As all of my ancestors arrived in North America […]

Read Full Post »

Prompt: What were your favorite gifts, both to receive and to give? Are there specific gift-giving traditions among your family or ancestors? For many years – since fairly early on in childhood, really – my favourite gifts have been books. Whether I’m giving them or receiving them, there are always books at Christmas. It’s the librarian […]

Read Full Post »

Today’s advent calendar prompt is an author’s choice on a topic that helps me remember Christmases past. For me, one of the key remembrances of Christmas past is the Stocking Party. Let me start by saying that in addition to my grandparents I was lucky enough to have two very involved great-aunts. They never married and took […]

Read Full Post »