Families have special traditions and histories to remember.

Traditions and Rituals

Traditions build family memories. These memories can be as basic as the smell of your mother's home cooking of a favorite meal or the sight of family photographs in your home. They can be everyday rituals, like the routine of setting the dinner table, or rituals for special occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries. Some rituals or traditions are actually occasions to share family stories from one generation to the next.

Mother's Day and Father's Day may be times of celebration or sorrow. Families often celebrate these special days with their own traditions, including phone calls, flowers, and meals. However, some find these particular holiday memories painful if they are not able to share them with an absent or deceased parent.

Religious or national holidays

Often closely linked to family memories and traditions, these vary from country to country. (see also Holidays).

Former President Clinton explained "Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated by families in the United Sates. Thanksgiving Day is one of America's most beloved and widely celebrated holidays. Whether descendants of the original colonists or new citizens, Americans join with family and friends to give thanks to a provident God for the blessings of freedom, peace, and plenty."

"Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go," starts a familiar song about family travel to traditional holiday meals. This holiday is one of the busiest of the year for family travel as people gather to share meals and memories. This is a big "taste memory," as well as the enduring memory of the smells of turkey in the oven, and the spices of home-baked pumpkin, apple, and mincemeat pies.

Emilie's favorite Thanksgiving Day memories include breaking bread to make stuffing for the turkey while watching either "Miracle on 34th Street" or the New York City Macy's Parade, of her father making his mother's turkey soup after the "big meal," and doing puzzles with her grandmother or playing games with cousins. Even after the family changed the traditional meal to eat Chinese on Thanksgiving because of allergies to turkey, Emilie still associates the holiday with these smells and activities.

Families and schools alike preserve memories of the Mass. Bay Colony Pilgrims' feast shared with Native Americans. Actually, this is an example of our national culture has basically rewritten our memory of Thanksgiving. An earlier Thanksgiving was celebrated in the colony of Virginia.

In the 2001 Thanksgiving proclamation, U.S. Pres. George W. Bush wrote, "Indeed, it is appropriate to mark this occasion by remembering the words of President Jefferson and the examples of Americans of the past and today who in times of both joy and need turn to Almighty God in prayer."

Interact! What traditions can you remember? Tell us about it!

Lesson plan for Family Interviews:

Teachers assign students to interview their parents about family traditions.

Students select one tradition to write answers to these questions:

What family tradition is important to you? Describe the tradition you discussed with your parents. Do you have any better understanding of the memory or purpose behind the way your familiy observes this tradition?

Afterwards, if they wish to, students may enter their findings in our "Interact" section.

Genealogical Research to Discover Family Memories

Family history memories are often conserved in family photo albums, bibles, or special books that record a family's genealogy. After family interviews and resources are checked, to recapture lost family memory, people consult census records, church and organizational records, immigration and vital statistics records, oral histories, and more. Many genealogical search aides are available. After exhausting local resources, you may need to turn to:

US Library of Congress' Local History & Genealogy
This Reading Room serves "one of the world's premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications. The Library's genealogical collection began as early as 1815 when Thomas Jefferson's library was acquired."

Sometimes family history and public history merge in Cultural Memories, particularly evidenced in oral history archives. Learning About Immigration Through Oral History, is one example of the American Memory collection lesson plans provided by the Library of Congress.