Write About Holiday Memories

Family Stories and Memories. Both treasured, but are they the same? Sometimes they are because a Family Story is something you remembered, or someone in your family did and passed it on to you. But some memories are yours and yours alone. 

Writing about your memories needn't be involved. It can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. Since December began, I have shared two Christmas memories of mine. Writing about something you remembered for a long time doesn't need to be a full story with a beginning, middle, and ending, and it doesn't need a plot like a full fiction story does. You can add a lesson learned or leave it as a simple memory. Your choice.

Holiday memories seem to be the ones people treasure most. Perhaps it is because whatever happened at Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanza left a lasting impression on you. I think many of the holiday children's books are stories based on a memory the author had and kept close for a long time.

Can you write about your memories and put them in your Family Stories book? Of course you can. The Family Stories are more likely to have the structure of a story, whereas the memory can be a short paragraph or two. Or it can be 1000 words, depends on how much you want to elaborate.

I have written many Christmas memory stories--about our family finding a Christmas tree when I was a child, about the magical Christmas windows of Marshall Field's Department Store, about the year my husband was only halfway with our family because of a duty he felt to his customer, about a Christmas blizzard (see this one next week!), about a special doll Santa brought to me when I was quite small, about the saddest Christmas I experienced, and more. 

What Christmas memories do you have that you might write about and include in your Family Stories book? The list below might trigger a few memories for you:

A.  Getting the family Christmas tree

B.  Church pageants

C.  Writing to Santa

D.  Reading the Christmas story in the bible

E.  Christmas shopping for your mom and dad

F.  Saving money to buy Christmas gifts

G. Attending special Christmas plays or ballets

H. Sitting on Santa's lap

I.  Special foods your family had at Christmas

J.  Baking with your mother or grandmother

K. Your favorite Christmas gift

Our poster today tells us that one of the best presents a person can give is a memory. You might write about a special memory and tuck it in inside a gift you are giving to someone in your family or a close friend. It's a gift that may trigger memories for them, as well. 

When something brings back a holiday memory for you, don't let it flit through your mind and disappear. Write about it and it's yours forever, to be revisited whenever you like.