 This gift is neither quick, easy or
inexpensive, but it is a treasure to those who receive it. Several years
ago our family decided to have a Christmas reunion. We notified everyone
two years in advance so plans could be made for Christmas 1998. As
children we spent Christmas at our grandparents’ home with great aunts
and uncles and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all
crowding into the house. Through the years the older ones have died and
the rest of us are middle-aged, or just past it, and have all gone our
separate ways and are in different parts of a vast country. We had
grandchildren our cousins had never seen, and we just hated for them to
lose the connections with their roots. So, we planned a traditional 
Christmas dinner for 62 (only two of the great-grandchildren couldn’t
attend because of work obligations) people at the fellowship hall of my
cousin’s church back in our hometown. This was in a gymnasium and we
left one end open so the men and children could shoot baskets, and there
were side rooms where the children could play or sleep, as well as the
large kitchen where we could cook.
 Several months ahead of time, we asked
everyone to contribute favorite recipes for a cookbook. Some had recipes
from our grandmother and some from our great-grandmothers also. We
included our memories of the person whose recipe we were using or told
how we got our recipes. I typed the recipes in with the computer page
set to 8 1/2 X 5 1/2-inch size; we had nearly 200 recipes. I took a
picture of blue and white china on shelves with pictures of our
grandparents on the shelves and a picture of a picnic outdoors with our
tartan showing from the wicker basket then copied and laminated these
for front and back covers. I printed a set then my aunt took the
original to a printer and had them bound. We sold them for $5 at the
reunion. One cousin worked on a family calendar, collecting pictures
from each family group to use on each page, and putting in birthdays and
anniversaries of all of us and of those who had gone before us. She also
put together an address book with pictures of our homes and churches
included. We bought special tablecloths, had napkins printed with the
occasion and the date, and had lovely centerpieces of roses made by one
cousin. I made napkin rings out of small grapevine wreaths to which I
glued a spray of silk holly and berries. Each family member was asked to
put a picture of himself/herself in a small picture frame which could be
tied to the Christmas tree as an ornament, and there were photos of our
ancestors on there too. Another cousin made special Victorian  ornaments
for the tree. I made special ornaments with each person’s name on
them. Another cousin had a cassette tape of some of those, who are no
longer living, talking about their ancestry, so she made copies to put
in a gift bag for each family group present. One person had some old
Christmas ornaments that had belonged to our grandmother so brought them
that we each might choose one to keep. Others made small gifts for each
gift bag. One cousin had done the research on the family ancestry and
made copies of that for each gift bag.
I seemed to be the person who had all of
the old family pictures, so I began copying pictures on a color copier
to get the tones of the old tintypes and brown tones just right. I also
had our great-grandmother’s Bible in which she had pressed a flower
and had a special poem. I took pictures of the Bible and made copies of
the pressed flowers and poem. I had pictures also of the tombstones of
many of our ancestors. The first page of the album listed all the family
surnames and told where they originated. I used paper that had a large
tree on it and put a quote about a family at the bottom of the page. I
began putting together the album beginning with a picture of our
great-grandparents in their store then working forward using pictures
from my grandfather’s family and then went to my grandmother’s
family which included a picture of our great-great-grandparents, used 
our grandparents’ wedding picture then had pictures of them with their
four sons from whom the rest of us came. I did sections on each son and
his family, pictures of the sons as children then up to the present,
some with wedding pictures and invitations, and used the most recent
pictures of the three sons who are now deceased to end their section.
The pictures continued on to include the great-grandchildren of those
four sons. Then there were pictures of past Christmases and other family
activities, which included all or some of us. The album was done in the
scrapbook style with borders around pictures, quotes, decorative
stickers, a picture of the last quilt our great-grandmother pieced and a
picture of a cup and saucer from her china set. One cousin and I took
the original pages to a printer and had copies made which we could slide
down into plastic protector sheets in a three-ring binder. We included
some extra pages so family members could insert the pictures they took
at the reunion. Each family group received one of these albums in their
gift bag. One cousin read the Christmas story and gave the prayer before
we ate. The wife of another cousin sang before the meal. We took
pictures of each family group and generational pictures. After the
dinner, our one remaining uncle played his ukelele and sang then told us
the things he remembers about his parents and grandparents.
 The next morning one cousin took whoever
was interested down to another county to the cemetery where many of our
ancestors are buried. That afternoon we had a tea for the women and
little girls at the home of an aunt. We dressed up and wore our hats,
even the smallest little girls. Each woman got a velvet bag with a gold
teaspoon inside and the little girls got tea party cookbooks and a gold
spoon. That night we had a family bowl-a-thon at a bowling alley in
town. Everyone went home with a bag full of goodies and memories to last
the rest of his/her life. And, we all had such a wonderful time that we
are planning to do it again soon, perhaps not at Christmas next time,
but I’m sure we will have all of the little extras to make it special
whatever the season. This is a great family gift each can give to
everyone else, but it must be planned well ahead as it isn’t the most
inexpensive thing to travel a great distance and stay in a hotel for
several days.
One cousin had shopped for months on eBay and bought a
number of teapots. Each adult guest at the ladies’ tea was allowed to
choose a teapot to take home as a memento, and each child was given a
miniature teapot. The aunts were each given a tea set purchased on eBay.
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