Christmas Gatherings

Our family is three members short after the past two years. My son's step-grandpa passed away, my step dad and my uncle. We plan to carry on the tradition of humor that these three people brought to the family gatherings. The step grandpa always sang a Danish song, my uncle played the banjo or guitar and my step dad had funny jokes. This year we are going to find old pictures (like the Dead Horse Investigation photo in Colleen Fitzpatrick's book) and put captions on it. We did this for stress relief when my step dad was in the hospital last year before he died...it was a crack up. We thought it would make a great Christmas Game for this year. How on earth do you judge something like that for prizes? A laugh-o-meter or who makes you laugh until you cry? My favorite photo is one of my ancestor "Ada Wescott" (nee. Coon) wearing a "bird" hat. Their caption was "How do you like us?". These hats were not just feathers but an actual stuffed bird. That is about as appealing to me as a real fox stole that women used to wear. EWWWW! I will look around at the Dead Fred website and see what else I can find.

Family Christmas Performances and games

Extended Family Christmas celebrations have been a tradition since before I was born, probably influenced by my great grandmother’s close knit Dutch ancestors. We were fortunate to have a large extended family located near where we lived in Racine, WI. One of the elements that was always included were our own created games and performances.

One year I remember my mom put a piñata up in the basement and all my cousins took a whack at it. It was filled with wonderful Christmas candies that melted in our mouths. Several of the Dahlbergs were musically inclined so we always had piano, guitar, banjo etc. to dance to on Christmas Eve.

When my mom remarried in 1979, mom and I carried our extended family gatherings with performances with us to California.

Some of the performances we have enjoyed over the years have been: puppetry (my mom, me and Josh) Christmas joke monologs (my brother or step dad) Christmas carol sing along by my step brother who plays Christmas carols on my mom's slightly out of tune piano and we gleefully sing along, sports related made up games (popsicle stick ball with ping pong balls and paper snowball fights) by my son, singing or signing by me, one year we made a clay model out of playdough of a family member and have others guess who it is, we tried to stump each other with word games and Christmas Quizzes: Christmas celebrations around the world. We always offer little prizes too.

This year my game will be: Funny captions for old pictures in honor of my step dad who first thought of it and used clip art, collected captions and put them in a special family book.