Monday, December 3, 2007

Wonderings About Christmas Celebrations ...

I realize that this might seem a bit random, since this is not a post on my memories of past Christmases. Instead, it is a post about some questions on my mind.

As Christmas comes around, I wonder how my ancestors celebrated Christmas. So far, I have not been able to find any diaries or letters written by my ancestors, so I have no idea. I have ancestors from the British Isles and from Germany, and I realize that the traditions of both areas are completely different. How was Christmas celebrated in the Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century? How did farmers in the Midwest celebrate Christmas? I don't have the answers to any of these questions. To me, this sounds like a good research topic. Does anyone have any idea where to start looking for information?

1 comment:

Miriam Robbins said...

Reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books will give you insight on how Christmas was celebrated in the nineteenth century. Actually, spending a lot of time reading fiction and non-fiction written by authors of various time periods and locales will be helpful.

Also, History Magazine is a very reader-friendly, helpful magazine to understand social history. It is published by the same company that created Family Chronicle and Internet Genealogy, and makes a great companion to those magazines as well.