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Chronicling Your Life Stories: More ideas for Thanksgiving

Posted on Monday, November 15, 2010 11:38 AM

As we all have experienced, a picture (and I'll extend that to other visuals as well) can say a thousand words.

Another idea for Thanksgiving is to ask each guest to bring to Thanksgiving dinner a picture or any other item related to a memory they have of Thanksgiving--or to a family story about Thanksgiving. For those people who don't have a picture or item related specifically to Thanksgiving, they can bring something related to the topic of giving thanks. Dinnertime can then be a time to go around the table and have each person tell about the picture or item they brought. Again, don't forget to have a camcorder or audio recorder going if possible--or at least someone taking notes--because during this exercise you'll be sharing memories, but making them as well.

And don't worry if there are guests at the dinner who are not family. It's a fun way to learn more about friends and their families as well.

Below is a Thanksgiving "visual" that I plan to share this year. I found it when I was cleaning out one of my drawers. It's a note that my youngest daughter gave to me and my husband at Thanksgiving, when she was 6 years old. She's 23 now.

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Chronicling Your Life Stories, starting with Thanksgiving

Naomi Kayne: Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010 7:05 PM

Welcome. For awhile already I've been wanting to start a blog--to speak with people about the steps they can take to preserve their own personal and family histories--and also to provide a space for people to share their family stories. As Thanksgiving approaches, I thought that now would be a good time to begin--for me to begin to blog--and for all of us to begin to be just a bit more proactive about capturing and preserving our own personal and family histories.

At Thanksgiving dinners, many families have the custom of going around the table, asking each person to state what they are thankful for. Try this variation of that exercise. Ask everyone what they are thankful for--but also ask them to recount a favorite family Thanksgiving story. I think you'll be delighted at the gems you'll get, from the adults in the group, but even from the little ones in the bunch. So make sure to have a means of recording the stories. A camcorder would be optimal, but an audio recorder, or even someone taking handwritten notes, will work also.

My favorite Thanksgiving story is one my father told about his first Thanksgiving in the United States after immigrating from a Jewish "shtetl" in Lithuania. My father, in first or second grade at the time, was bubbling with enthusiasm about everything he was learning in school about the traditions of Thanksgiving, and eagerly awaited a feast of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and home made pies. Unfortunately, his mother, who was still very much a foreigner, probably not yet speaking a word of English, knew nothing of Thanksgiving. When my father asked her when they would be having their Thanksgiving feast, her answer was "Ach...that's for the others, not for us." Heartbroken, my father cried and cried until his older brother, seeing my father's disappointment, found a brilliant compromise. He took my father to a local kosher deli and ordered a turkey sandwich.

When I first told this story to the daughter of the older brother, she was so moved. Since it was a story my father and not her father told, she had never even heard it. So, be generous. Share your family stories. I think you'll be glad you did. If you'd like, you can start right here--on this blog.

Epilogue: Over the years, my father's family grew to love and respect the Thanksgiving holiday so much, that it became the only non-religious holiday on which they wore their Sabbath clothes.

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Chronicling Your Life Stories: More ideas for Thanksgiving

Chronicling Your Life Stories, starting with Thanksgiving