At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, the Fall equinox has recently passed, the Harvest Festivals are in high gear, and Thanksgiving in the United States - celebrating plenty and prosperity - is not far away.
Until recently, until the Industrial and then Technological Revolution, our ancestors lived around AGRICULTURE, and fall was a time of rest before the harshness of snowy and sometimes bitter winters.
It is during this season that the remembrance of our ancestors, be it through the Mexican DAY OF THE DEAD festivities (all those sugary funny skeletons going through the paces of daily life in the afterlife!) or ALL SOULS DAY (throughout Christendom).
Today I try to imagine what life so close to the earth and the weather and so dependent on local crops must have been. Today we live lives extended through better nutrition (vitamins!) and medicine, but in the past, at this time of year many people must have wondered if they would live through the winter to see the spring flowers bloom.
Today we are sheltered from death in many ways. We expect to live a long time and plan accordingly. When someone dies it is not so often at home but in a hospital, where professionals come to take the body away; it used to be the relatives did so and layed the person out at home.
This is a good time to collect the memories of our living relatives and to ask their cooperation in our genealogy and family history projects. You may want to record the stories of funerals - the wakes, walk around cemeteries recording information from tombstones, or simply light a candle to those ancestors who help you in your research!
