Ask Your Grandparents About Their Traditions

My Oma had one rule in her house. Nobody touched the bottom drawer under the good tablecloth.

We used to joke about it when we were kids. Love letters. Secret cash. Something she didn’t want Grandad finding. She’d just smile that little smile and never say a word.

As we got older, we worked out what was actually in there. But we never let on. We let the magic carry on, for her as much as for us.

She passed away last week.

What Was Inside the Drawer

This year that drawer is already full.

Already wrapped, even with her shaky hands. Corners so sharp you could cut yourself, ribbons curled just right. Christmas, done and waiting, months ahead of time.

Same as every year.

What Life Taught Her

My Oma grew up after the war with next to nothing. Some years Christmas was one orange split between five kids.

She told us that story so many times we could say it along with her. What she never told us was what she did about it, every single year, once she actually could.

We don’t know what she was thinking on those nights before Christmas, everything wrapped just so.

On the night before Christmas, we always read Christmas stories together, and the magic of it came alive every year. Even though she never had much growing up, you could tell it was the most magical time of year for her.

“I love Christmas Eve,” she’d say every year, watching us rip into one present that night.

Every single Christmas Eve for the rest of her life, she gave herself the childhood she never got. Through us. And we quietly let her.

The Question I Never Asked

I’ve got recordings of her war stories. Dates, facts, the orange. I’ve got the outline of her life.

I never asked what those Decembers actually felt like from the inside. Before she decided to spend the rest of her life fixing them for someone else.

I can’t ask her now.

That’s the drawer I actually can’t open.

You probably still can. One question, this Christmas.

Our First Christmas Without Her

This Christmas is going to be strange. No wrapped surprise waiting under the good tablecloth. I don’t think it’s ever going to feel the same again.

But we know where it came from now. We know whose tradition this was, and why it mattered so much. So we’ll carry it on. For her.

I read later that this might genuinely help. Researchers at Harvard found that people who used rituals after a loss felt less upset and more in control, even when they didn’t believe rituals would work.

Every Tradition Has a Story Underneath

If there’s someone in your life who pours themselves into something ordinary, a holiday, a Sunday roast, some tradition nobody else thinks twice about, there’s almost always a reason underneath it they’ve never said out loud.

There’s a reason traditions feel so important. A review of 50 years of research on family routines and rituals found they tell a family “this is who we are”, and carry that feeling from one generation to the next.

That’s what Oma’s drawer was. Not just presents. A way of saying who we are.

Ask them.

Questions to Ask Your Grandparents About the Traditions They Love

These are the questions I wish I’d asked. You don’t need all of them. Pick one or two this Christmas, and let them talk.

About the tradition

Why does this tradition matter so much to you?
Who taught you to do it this way?
What would you like us to keep doing, long after you’ve handed it on?

About growing up

What was Christmas like when you were a child?
What did you go without, and what did that feel like?
What’s a smell, a song or a food that takes you straight back?

About what sits underneath

What do you remember most about your parents?
What’s a moment in your life that changed everything?
What did those years feel like from the inside, not just what happened?
What do you want people to remember about you?

The dates and facts matter. But it’s the feelings underneath them you’ll want to hear again one day.

For more ideas, see our questions to ask your grandmother and your grandfather, or our guide to the Christmas gift for grandparents that can’t be wrapped.

Want more questions like these? Email hello@frombeyond.co with “Life story questions” in the subject line, and we’ll send you our free question pack, The Questions We Never Asked. We’ll only use your email address to send it.

Record the Answer This Christmas

Then record the answer, in their own voice, so it stays in the family.

That’s why we built FromBeyond.co. Nex can gently ask the questions, and their answers become a video in their own voice, kept safe for the people who love them.

So it’s something you were told, not something you have to guess.

What tradition will you ask about this year?

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Alice Footer, Co-Founder of FromBeyond.co

FromBeyond.co helps families ask the questions that matter, and keep the answers forever, in the voices they love.

The Drawer She Never Let Us Open