My Christmas Past - Christmas 1968 - Or How I learned to smile again!

Terry and her siblings Christmas 1968

This was the year after the infamous "Christmas Slap" and right after my braces had been removed. I suddenly felt like smiling again.

© 18 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

The 62nd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy Has Posted!

You saw what my three wishes were of Dear Genea-Santa. Now read the wishes of the other geneabloggers at Jasia's Creative Gene post, "Carnival of Genealogy, 62nd Edition." Thanks, Jasia, for another well done edition of the COG.

© 18 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

My Christmas Past - Shoe Envy 1955

Christmas 1955 - I don't remember much about that Christmas except that I had a bad case of shoe envy. Once I spied my cousin's black patent leather shoes, I was permanently done with those "baby" white shoes of mine. I was two.

© 17 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

A Blog Caroling We Will Go - Part Two

Last week, our own footnote Maven invited the geneablogger community to participate in the Internet version of caroling. This week the very clever fM created her own Christmas Caroling Tree to link you to the various Christmas inspired bloggers. As you check on the link to each of the geneabloggers, you might want to look around to see some of their other Christmas inspired posts. Thanks fM! And a very Merry Christmas caroling to you all

© 17 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Happy Birthday Moe Dog!

Because I love you and because it’s your birthday, I won’t mention the time we were seated at your sister’s sixth grade band concert, and you leaned over and said to me in a very loud stage whisper, “Mom, I forgot to put my underwear back on after my bath,” creating a laughing spasm that rippled through three rows of concert goers and making me want to slither under my seat. 

 Instead, I’ll just say - Happy 30th Birthday, kiddo! (Where did the time go?) 

© 16 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

 Love, Mom

A Locket of Hair, An old Christmas Recipe and A Family Bible - Three Genea Wishes for Christmas

The locket of red hair, given to the six year old at her mother’s funeral in 1911, had no intrinsic value, but decades later, as she spoke about the gift, its cherished nature was still evident. 

The challenge for the 62nd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is Three Wishes. “This is your chance to write a letter to Genea-Santa. Make a list of 3 gifts you would like to receive this holiday season from 3 of your ancestors. These have to be material things, not clues to your family history (we're talking gifts here, not miracles!).” So … 

 Dear Genea-Santa, 

 I would like the locket of my great grandmother’s hair that my great aunt Lucille was given the day she said good-bye to her mother. Shortly afterwards, Lucille and her siblings were separated, and as an adult, it was Lucille’s quest that brought her not to her brother’s doorstep some forty years later, but to the doorstep of her brother’s son, my father. 

To have the locket of hair would serve as a reminder of one woman’s tenacity for putting her family back together.

In my stocking, Santa, it would be easy for you to add a recipe card from another Great Grandmother’s kitchen. Emma Gleffe Schrader was, according to my grandmother (with a hearty endorsement from my father) a very accomplished cook and baker. I’ve heard that there exists a surviving recipe for her Christmas Yule Roll. This would be a wonderful way of passing on an old family tradition that future generations could enjoy, and a way of honoring my great grandmother’s memory. Santa, please!

 And finally, in the family of my third great grandparents William Armstrong and Leah Shupe Armstrong, there is a family bible which includes the birth of my own great great grandmother Elizabeth Harriet Armstrong Feasel. Is it too much to ask that Leah’s own parents kept such a family bible, and that somehow, miraculously, it would come into my possession? Okay, I know we don’t get to ask for miracles, but hey, this could be the only way I figure out who Leah’s parents were.

Well Santa, there you have it, my three wishes. I know that these are a lot to ask of one poor overworked fellow, but it sure was fun daydreaming about the possibilities. Merry Christmas Santa, and don’t eat too many Christmas Cookies! 

 Terry S.

© 15 Dec 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

A Christmas Caroling We Will Go

The foototeMaven has invited Genea-bloggers to come Christmas caroling with her today. Of course, she's stipulated that we put down our favorite Christmas carol, and as everybody knows I'm too wishy washy to have a favorite. But here is one that I often hum to myself during this time of year. Judy Garland first performed the song in 1944 in the movie "Meet Me in St. Louis." Written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine, below is the version that most of us know. 

In 1957, as Frank Sinatra was recording his album, "A Jolly Christmas," he asked for a rewrite of one of the lines. The line went from "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow" to "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough." 

 The original version that Martin and Blaine wrote, was even darker with the first two lines reading, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, It may be your last."

 Below is the Frank Sinatra version:

  Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas 

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, 

Let your heart be light 

From now on, our troubles will be out of sight 

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, 

Make the Yule-tide gay, 

From now on, our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days, Happy golden days of yore,

 Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us once more.

Through the years We all will be together,

If the Fates allow

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough. 

And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

© 12 December 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder