Cultural Traditions: Honoring Your Family’s Generations

Novel Ways to Invite Family Generations Back Into Your Home

Many cultures have strong traditions that intentionally and lovingly invite family members and ancestors back into the home. Two examples are:

*Ofrenda: is the Mexican and Mexican-American tradition of an “offering” built to help family remember, to learn about, and celebrate their ancestors’ lives.

* Obon: is a Japanese summer festival, it is a celebration for welcoming back ancestors’ spirits and returning to one’s family roots.

Using these important cultural traditions as points of inspiration, one of the goals at Life Story Books is to find novel ways to condense our family history information down into visually compelling reminders about who we are, by celebrating who we were.

I am fascinated by the process of taking family archive photos and information and creating rich, simple visuals that can be displayed in the home -a magnet that you see on the fridge everyday, a framed photograph that hangs in the front hallway, even holiday cards that incorporate earlier generations in photos, or in their own words.

Here, for example, are four generations of great-grandparents, who are compiled into one visual that can be reasonably printed as a high quality card, or refrigerator magnet. I can work with you to create and order many different kinds of presentations of family to mail, or display in your home.