Creative Ways to Celebrate Your Heritage

Kemper County recently hosted its annual Heritage Day. The festival spot­lighted several historical ar­tifacts from our town’s history. Plus, it helped to emphasize the importance of preserving one’s history. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, or simply an ordinary citizen, you can help honor your family/town’s history and help the younger genera­tion gain a sense of identity. Here are some great ways you can do it.

Hope Chest

Share your family/town’s history by creating a Hope Chest. What is a Hope Chest? A Hope Chest used to be a wooden box where young women placed items that they wanted to take to their new homes with them when they married. How­ever, today, a Hope Chest can be constructed out of anything that you want it to be. It can be small or large. It can be made for a boy or for a girl. Things that you can put inside a Hope Chest include whatnots, family recipes, dishes, quilts, family photos, jew­elry, and any other items that are unique to your her­itage.

Photo Collage

What better way to share family/town his­tory than through pictures. Don’t just share a bunch of random photos. Create a historical photo collage of those old pictures. Thanks to modern technology, this is simple. All you will need is the photos and ac­cess to a computer pro­gram to begin combining those precious memories.

Mural

What is a mural? A mural is a large picture that is painted directly onto an interior or exterior sur­face. They often depict a particular event or tell a story. Our local grocery store, Pilgrim’s, has beautiful mu­rals all around its walls. Each mural shares a beautiful and unique piece of history. You can do something sim­ilar. If you have an empty wall or other free space, you can design a mural of your family/town history.

Create a Video

Video is the most popu­lar forms of communica­tion today. People are obsessed with sites like Tik Tok, where short form videos rule. Tap into all of this wonderful technology while preserving your her­itage. Make a fun video documenting your family or town’s history. This doesn’t have to be any­thing elaborate. A quick, short video of family pho­tos, town events, or his­torical sites can be transformed into a video. Simply add music, and Voilà!

I recently created one myself of the Veteran’s Memorial Engraved Walk­way at the Kemper County Courthouse on Memorial Day. This video went viral on Instagram.

Family biographies

If you like to write, con­sider creating a family or town biography. Start by completing a family tree. Then, collect family pho­tos, locate historical records, and interview your family members. You can create your biography using specially purchased computer programs or simply save the informa­tion on a storage devise. Once you have composed your biography, you can have it turned into a book. You can then distribute copies of the biography to your family members.