The topic for Week 51 in Amy Coffin’s and Geneablogger’s 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History series is: Holiday Events. Where did your family gather for the Christmas as a child? Which family members and friends attended the event?
I talked a little about this in an earlier post about holiday travel. When I was young we would go to my mother’s family home but later on Christmas was mainly celebrated at our house, sometimes with aunts and families and sometimes just our family. We’ve never had the big jolly Christmas celebration with myriad relations as so often portrayed, mainly because I come from a family that just isn’t all that large.
In our years in Papua New Guinea we celebrated with our friends who formed a family-type group when our own families were many many miles away. A couple of years we had friends visiting from Australia and only once was our Christmas celebrated in Australia, the year our daughter was tiny and my grandmother died.
Since returning to Australia all those years ago, we’ve celebrated with a mix of family and/or friends either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. As our children have formed their own families we’ve mainly been fortunate to have the majority of them around at Christmas time, but no matter where we are, we’ve been in touch by phone or Skype. Our celebrations are never large events but they’re still important to our family and we have our own traditions.
Family history across the seas 