What To Do With All Those Christmas Cards

Diana Lynn Tibert has published a great article in the Kings County (New Brunswick) Record about Christmas cards, She writes, "Yes, Christmas cards are significant to genealogy research." She then goes on to describe her method of tracking "almost every known address for family members regardless if I send them a card. I always buy a large book, so it will last 20 years or more."

You can read this interesting article at http://kingscorecord.canadaeast.com/news/article/519815.

Comments

[Suzia]

Indeed, Christmas cards can be a great snapshot of family doings. The article gave good suggestions for preserving the little snippets of information found in them.

For over a year I've been helping clean out my mother's home while she settles into a senior apartment. Among the things she saved are virtually every letter and greeting card received since our little family moved from Chicago in 1948. Most of the letters and about half of the cards have their original envelopes with return addresses and postmarks. Unfortunately, due to several subsequent moves, these have not been found in any organized fashion, but what a wealth of information!

No one in our family journaled or kept diaries, but about 10 years ago my mother returned from a trip to Illinois with all the mail we had sent in the intervening years. Now I have a blow-by-blow account of my childhood years, or at least the account my parents were willing to share.

That's why it has taken more than a year . . the family historian in me can't bear to part with any piece of paper, pending its possible significance. I have to 1) read all this stuff, 2) ask a million questions, 3) put aside anything that could conceivably be important to anyone else, 4) find a place to house the collection in the meantime, 5) organize, catalog, digitize. Not there yet.

You can certainly tell when long-distance telephone calls became more affordable. Much less "meat" in the written correspondence.
So keep those Christmas cards coming . . along with the xeroxed holiday letters. Your card may be a little something extra you leave for posterity!

Merry Christmas to all!

[Sharon Clay]

When my mother was downsizing I was going through all of her things also and found she had kept every letter, card, announcement from everyone through the years. I found one letter from 1933 addressed to her on 33rd street in Minneapolis, and I told her that I had found it. She said "I never lived on 33rd St. in Minneapolis". Hmm. So, I continued going through the box of communications, and about an hour later came across a letter from her cousin - dated 1983, and she commented how she was remembering all the fun they used to have when Mom lived with them on 33rd St. in Minneapolis. A letter written 50 years later, solved the problem.

[Linda A.]

I wrote in a journal for nearly 40 yrs., I have them stored in a box with a note so when my children find them after I am gone the note enclosed will tell them this....you will laugh, you will cry, you will be angry when you read these but for me they were the sharing of the heart on a daily basis. I included newsclippings, deaths of famous & well knowns, articles of special events in the USA & other places. Flyers and tidbits of places I went and things that I did or often their Father & I did. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they begin to read them. Last year for the first time I did not keep a journal but missed doing it so much I purchased one and will once again write daily beginning in 2009.