The Annual Christmas Newsletter

A yearly newsletter is a great way to record a brief history of your family. I have copies of our family's Christmas newsletters since 1988 (all except 1989).  The first three years were just normal, stereotypical, ho-hum newsletters, but then something happened in 1991. That year I decided to begin my Christmas newsletter with "Once upon a time...", and the rest is history.  The fairy tale theme was followed up in 1992 with a rewrite of "Jingle Bells" - complete with sheet music, a newspaper in 1993, and a child's reading primer in 1994, and it just kept going.  

People either love or hate Christmas newsletters.  I think it all boils down to the style of the newsletter.  I personally prefer humorous newsletters and have made it a point to present our yearly family update in a funny and enjoyable way.  I get that some things are hard to find humor in, like the year I had to come up with a way to share about a family member's Alzheimer's diagnosis.  I finally settled upon a crossword puzzle theme so that I could present the diagnosis in an enjoyable format, but not make light of it. Then there was the year when my newsletter was finished, but I couldn't mail it until after Christmas because my father-in-law passed away in mid-December.  That year I went ahead and mailed my already finished letter, late, but after I had added a brief note of sorrow, tribute, and faith on the other side.  

I have not repeated a theme since the 1991 fairytale. Some years I agonize over inspiration for a theme and some years the perfect idea just drops in my lap. That's what happened in 2015 when the movie, "The Force Awakens," was due to be released just before Christmas and Star Wars mania was rampant. Once the idea of using the Star Wars opening crawl for a theme popped in my head, my newsletter was written in just a few hours, and it was so much fun writing about our family's galactic empire! I have to admit, the older I get, the harder it is to get motivated and come up with a different theme. True confession: I often do an internet search looking for ideas that others have done. But the effort of writing the newsletter is worth it in the end and the decorated binder full of our family's Christmas letters is a treasured holiday fixture on our end-table. Reading each year about our family's past adventures and highlights always makes me smile.

If you are stuck for an newsletter idea this year, here's a list of some of the themes I have used, followed by a photo of my favorite:

• Fairytale
• Dick and Jane type reading Primer
• The Jones Family Enquirer tabloid
• A newspaper
• Star Wars movies opening crawl (there's a StarWarsesque font at dafont.com)
• ACME (A Christmas Made Easy) generic Christmas Letter
• The Family Zoo comic strip
• Movie reviews
• A restaurant menu
• Sheet music – a rewrite of Jingle Bells
• A rewrite of The Night Before Christmas titled The Year Before Christmas
• Written from the dog’s POV
• The Gonzalez Heritage Dictionary
• A Facebook post feed
• Google search results for McPherson Family Christmas Letter
• A travel guide to the kingdom of Clarkania
• The Young and the Rest of Us soap opera recap
• Multiple choice quiz
• Limericks written by family members
• A crossword puzzle (I suggest using puzzlemaker.com)
• Car dealer - new car window sticker
• Abrams Family High School Yearbook
• Scout Merit Badge Handbook
• Paragraphs about each family member typed in the shape of tree ornaments
• The Game of Life – Box cover on front and mock board game on back
• Recipe cards
• Signposts along a winding road
• Top Ten list
• Big Box store - WilsonMart - Holiday sale insert
• Letter to Santa
• Wanted Poster
• Trivia game cards

Themes I haven't done yet but they're on my possibilities list:

• Acrostic
• Wikipedia entry
• Ice Cream Shoppe menu marquee
• Goodreads or Amazon reviews by fake reviewers (have fun with the names)
• IMDB movie listing
•  A playbill
• School report card with teacher comments
• Word Search puzzle
• Product (Year) recall notice
• Class Action lawsuit notice

Remember, pretty much any written matter can be turned into a Christmas letter theme.  Look at the mail that shows up in your box and see what you can come up with!

A Family Portrait

I love finding out the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE on my family tree, but a photo of my ancestor really makes them come alive in my mind. I was always told that I looked like my grandma Marie. I never saw any resemblance because I only remembered my grandmother as an old woman. However, when my aunt gave me some photos of her as a younger woman, I saw what others who had known her in earlier days saw. Likewise, my sister recently pointed out how much my youngest son looked like my father in photos of the two at approximately the same age.

If your parents and/or grandparents are still living, they are the obvious people to approach for photographs of themselves. If they don't have any, your aunts, uncles, and cousins may. Today's technology is a great place to turn to next. I once found a photograph of a 2nd great-grandfather simply by entering his name into a search engine and clicking on images. I have also found photos of ancestors by simply asking for them on family history message boards. Social networking sites make it easy to request and share old family photos.



Recently, I have been entering my collected family history data into ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. Occasionally, when I search for source records in Ancestry or FamilySearch, I find links to sources like passports, newspapers, and even school yearbooks. These sources often contain photographs. I attach the photographs to the individuals in my family tree by following these steps:

1. Press the print screen (prtsc) key on the computer to take a screen shot of the web page with the photo.

2. Paste the screen shot into the basic graphics/painting software that came with my computer.

3. Click on the select feature and draw a box around the photo.

4. Click copy.

5. Open a new page in the graphics program.

6. Paste the photo I selected and copied.

7. If the photo is surrounded by unwanted white area on the bottom and right side, I click on the corner dot and pull that corner in to get rid of the white space.

8. Click "save as," then name and save the photo. I can then upload the photo to whatever site I want and attach it to an individual.

There are probably other ways to capture and save photos you find online, but this is the method I use.

If you use FamilySearch, you can download the related Memories app to your smart phone.  You can then use the camera on your phone to take pictures of old photos and documents and upload them to FamilySearch directly through the Memories app.  This is so easy!

So go ahead, add some photos to your pedigree chart and online family tree. Maybe the photos you post will help someone see that they look like their great grandparent!

Storycorps is coming to town!

Sometimes I am lucky enough to catch the StoryCorps segment on NPR (National Public Radio) as I drive to work on Friday mornings. If you are not familiar with the StoryCorps project, the mission of the project is to:



I often find myself in tears, either of joy or sadness, by these thoughtful stories of individual struggles and insights as shared by the people who experience them. After listening to one of these stories, I can't help but wonder what sort of story I would share if I were in that recording booth. I heard recently that the StoryCorps booth is coming to a nearby town. I don't plan on going to the booth, but I was excited all the same because I can count on more Friday morning radio stories.

You don't need a StoryCorps booth to record the stories of your loved ones. Grab a tape recorder or download an app onto your phone and just do it.

Here are a few suggestions from the maven :

• Ask open-ended questions to to get your storyteller to open up. In general, avoid questions that solicit only a yes or no answer. 
• If you want to interject, limit your input to questions concerning details and feelings about their experience(s). 
• If you want your guest to talk about a particular experience or period in time, do some research of your own first so that you can more easily ask follow-up questions. 
• Don't interrupt your storyteller with your own stories, save those for a recording of your own. This is your guest's time to open up and share. 

Family Medical Pedigree

 Over the years I have filled out not a few questionnaires about my family medical history.  You know, the type that asks:  Have you or anyone in your family ever suffered from heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, headaches, liver disease, kidney disease, brain-eating zombies, etc.  The older I get, the more boxes I seem to be able to check off on these questionnaires.  A few years ago I reached the age whereupon AARP invitations began to appear in my mailbox weekly. This is also the age when, at my my yearly check-up, doctors tsk, tsk, tsk at me, telling me to cut back on the mint chip ice cream, lose a few pounds, and exercise more. 

The AARP invites and friendly reminders from my doctor eventually got me to thinking, just what has everyone in my ancestry suffered and died from?  I opened up a new file in my genealogy software program and entered only birthdates and death dates.  In place of my parents and grandparents' names I listed their cause of death and age at death. I was able to gather the causes of death from death certificates, death registers, and obituaries. If there was another medical issue I included it elsewhere under that ancestor's listing.  The end result was a simple and very informative pedigree chart showing my family medical history.  I could see at a glance the lines where diabetes or heart issues were rampant.  It was also easy to see which lines were long lived or tended to suffer early deaths.  I sent a copy to each of my siblings and received rave reviews.