Why has it become increasingly popular to do your family tree, dig up family histories, and why is there suddenly such value placed on having connections to the past? Scrap booking is an interesting example of this phenomena in an alternate hobby form. Women (mostly) seem bent on “saving the memories” for others… their kids etc. Certainly there is the craft elements of the hobby… something fun and colorful to do in one’s spare time. But the message that scrap booking companies put on it is definitely pushing the “save it for future generations” mentality. WHY? Why are we suddenly wanting to save EVERYTHING? What once was dismissed as relatively “insignificant” (e.g. the yearly picture of Uncle Leo in a turkey induced coma, or 10,000 pictures of one’s cat) is now pushed as being savable and “scrapbookable.”
The irony is that while saving things for future generations, (how many of our mothers and grandmothers didn’t do some form of this?) is a valuable and many might say necessary part of being human, women I’ve spoken with feel GUILT that they are “behind” in their scrap booking. Rather than a relaxing hobby or a systematic means of remembering the past, scrap booking has become a source of guilt or obligation.
To bring this back to genealogical study, as I delve into public records, I again wonder why some things have been saved, recorded, and “valued” for the duration of, say, 100 years, and other items have been forgotten. What counts in genealogy research? What’s valuable as artifact? What will be valuable 100 years from now? Certifiable things like marriage licenses or censuses? Scrap books of Uncle Leo and the cat?
It’s interesting to me as I think of what is “valuable” that things like scrap books of Uncle Leo and the cat march right along side census records. That’s one of the things about genealogical or family history writing that pleases me most. Pretenses aren’t so strong. Simply *anything* that sheds light on one’s personal search is considered valuable. Instead of the academic grind of “is this a legitimate research article” one gets to intermingle the high and the low.
Oh, and in some of my online world, I've seen screen names for scrap booking lovers like "lovescrapping" which makes me laugh every.single.time. You do the math...
