A Most Excellent Stocking Stuffer
My mother buys all of the Christmas gifts for her family and friends. My father helps by looking things up on the internet when mom cannot find the perfect gift or acceptable price. This year, dad actually outdid himself. Dad compiled a genealogy binder for each of us. It includes names, birth dates, and such for five generations. When available, he included photos of our ancestors. 
(By the way, my “spouse” is listed as unknown. Huh? Do I have to count a literal sperm donor as a spouse in the hereafter? I don’t get it.)
Five generations only goes back to about the late 1800s for birthdates. Most lines are all born and bred here in Utah, with the exception of my maternal grandfather’s family, who came over from the Piedmont region of Italy. If one looked further back in the other lines, the ancestors come mostly from England, Denmark, and Germany.
My father is, I’m sure, doing his Mormonly duty of researching and compiling five generations of ancestors so righteous Mormons can “baptize for the dead” those who have gone before who were not members of the Mormon church; thus, saving their eternal souls. Why was this such an excellent gift in my eyes? It prompted an answer to a question I heard posed years ago and couldn’t figure out the answer.
I don’t remember which country he was from, but a young man from a European country asked why Americans were always stating their ancestry; where they “came from.” He didn’t understand why it wasn’t enough to say we were American. And after looking through my excellent stocking stuffer, I know the answer, at least for me.
The United States is a young country. We tear down buildings when they get to be too old (at the ripe old age of 50ish). We are still building traditions. We are indeed a melting pot, and we all came from somewhere else. And we feel the need to have roots, and if those roots aren’t very long where we live now, we go back a little further.
So I am proud of all of those normal, boring, non US people who came before me. Each contributed to how I get to live my life. I want to visit where they all lived. I want to learn about the traditions of those countries at the time they lived in them. I don’t want to be an isolated ugly American. Nothing wrong with that.
Filed under: History, Life Lessons, Family
