Since it is September, Halloween candy and merchandise have been creeping onto the shelves for weeks now. This time of year is a lot of fun, and it brings back a lot of great memories from my childhood. While I remember quite a bit about the fun things that I did on Halloween when I was small I can’t help but wonder about what my parents and my in-laws and other relatives did when they were younger. One of the great things about genealogy is that when you do genealogy as a hobby, you constantly get all of these fun ideas for genealogy themed projects. As I think about what I will do for a Halloween costume for my son this year, I also think about how much fun it would be to make a family Halloween scrapbook.
My parents have many, many pictures of my sister and I in our Halloween costumes. My in-laws have some pictures of my husband all dressed up for Halloween too. Perhaps they even have some pictures and stories of their own from their childhood – I have not yet explored this with them, but it opens up the opportunity for a fun discussion where I will learn things that I did not know before. As an adult, it is fun to keep thinking of the things about my parents and my in-laws that I do not know and learning about them.
Any holiday can be the perfect subject for a genealogy scrapbook. While pedigree charts and family history books can be great ways to preserve the basic and important facts of your family’s history, scrapbooks can also be a fun way to collect family stories and memories and preserve them for years to come. I like the idea of organizing them into holiday themed books because many family memories are made on holidays and the stories and pictures can create a wonderful keepsake with a unique perspective on your family.
My favorite Halloween memories include the handmade costumes that my mother lovingly created for my sister and I, and how my dad would drive us to my aunt’s condo complex in a nearby city for trick-or-treating after we made our way through our own small neighborhood. I look forward to writing about these memories and looking back at all of the pictures. I also look forward to creating costumes and memories for my little guy and sharing our Halloween memory book with him when he gets older.
Photo by gracey on morguefile.com.