Our Family Heritage Christmas Ornaments

Above is the photo of the front of a single Bulb. It reads, "Look Daddy. Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."--From the movie It's a Wonderful Life. There are two other imprint sides chronicling the stories of our family member's lives this year.

Here are the 22 Bulbs on which we imprinted personalized family stories. After imprinting all messages, the ink on the bulbs must cure for 5 days. There were 11 for the Zaccardi Family and 11 for the Stefani Family. 

We imprint something about each family member in the space on the bulb -- and no matter how "challenging" the year has been, we always try to find something positive to say. Each couple receives a bulb and each child receives one for their family heirloom. Over the years, we've transitioned from imprinting two sides, to three. We did this because
the family grew and there was more to say and because we increased the font size a little as our aging bodies seemed to require a slightly larger imprint to be more easily read. 

We've been doing this for 13 years. Each year of the first 12 years we had an image representing one of the 12 Days of Christmas (in order).  We imagine that when family members are gathered 'round and decorating their Christmas trees with our ornaments, that they re-read them and relive and retell the stories remembered as prompted by the messages on the bulbs. For example, when celebrating Christmas at a family member's home this year, I saw all the ornaments we had made over the years on her little tree and read one and said, "I remember that year, it was ..." This engaged the family in happy memories and created a happy group conversation. For that, these are true family heritage heirloom ornaments. Because we have the pad press machine ourselves, if a family member should happen to break an ornament over the years, we are able to replace it by making another.

This is one of our family traditions of keeping the stories alive and sharing with the younger generation. Do you have family holiday traditions? If so, please feel free to share them here. We'd love here about them.