December, like every other month this year, is flying by and it’s time for more Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver, who is continuing the holiday-themed challenges:

Join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. Here’s your chance to sit on Genea-Santa’s lap (virtually) and tell him about your Christmases past.

Rev up the olde thynking cap and cue up the Mission Impossible music – your mission should you decide to accept it – keeping with the Christmas theme – is:1)   Today’s challenge is to share memories of December holiday gatherings and celebrations with your families (as a child, a young adult, a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a nibling, a cousin, an in-law)!  

2)  Pick two or three questions from the list in my blog post:  Ask AI Gemini:  “What questions can I write about concerning family gatherings and celebrations during the December holidays?”  This is a new list of questions somewhat different from last year’s list.

I like the second question that Randy chose:

Question:  If you could travel back in time to observe one specific holiday gathering from your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ era, which one would it be and why?

I would choose Christmas 1900 in Calais, Maine with my 2X great grandparents, Calvin and Nellie (Tarbox) Adams, who also had my great grandparents, Charles and Annie (Stuart) Adams and my grandfather, Vernon Tarbox Adams living with them.

Given that Christmas time is a time for reminiscing, I’d love to hear them tell stories about Calvin’s and Nellie’s parents and grandparents and also observing them all interact on Christmas Day.

They might well be sharing family stories that have been lost to time. Nellie wouldn’t have remembered her grandparents, who died when she was small and they lived far away. She could, however, talk about her parents. Calvin, on the other hand, was a teenager when his grandparents died in the late 1850s and they were children of Loyalists who lived nearby.

Question: Who is typically the host of the main December holiday celebration? Has this role always belonged to the same branch of the family?

When my mother-in-law was living (she passed away in 2013), my sister-in-law and I used to alternate hosting holidays. One did Thanksgiving, one Christmas and one had the year off, but helped the hostess.

Now that Ruby is gone, my sister-in-law and I alternate hosting the two holidays. Since we only live a couple of streets apart, travel isn’t an issue.

Before my sister-in-law’s parents and my own mother died, they used to come to each holiday get-together, too. At our largest group, there were eleven of us, now reduced to six.

We do spend a lot of time reminiscing!

Thanks, Randy. I wonder if next week will be our Genea-Santa letter?