Why We Tell Family Stories
Dr. Daniel R. Anderson-Little
December 19, 2004
"Tell me the story of Uncle David when he was a boy." With these words, I would implore my paternal grandmother Agathe Daniel Little to tell my favorite family story in a voice that was made to tell family stories.
"Well," she would start out, "when David was a little boy - your father and Henry were already in school - I took him to the market one day to get our groceries. It was a cold day in Winnetka and we were all bundled up in the car. On the way home from the market (she never called it a grocery store), David was unusually quiet. Now this was unusual because David was such a talkative little boy. Finally, as he sat next to me he said to me: 'Mom, have you ever stolen anything?' I said, 'Why no David...have you?' And with tears welling up in his eyes, he nodded his yes. 'And what did you steal?' I asked him. He slowly opened up his mittened hand and there sitting in the middle of his hand was a single peanut - the kind that were sold in big barrels. I asked him if he thought we should bring it back to the store and he nodded yes. So I turned the car around and went back to the market. When we got there I asked for the manager and when he came I said, 'My son has something to give you.' And David presented him with the peanut. The store manager was very appreciative and put the peanut back in the barrel."
And the punch line of this story is that this is the little boy who grew up to become a professor of Christian ethics! I don't know how many times I heard that story - and every time I did, even though I knew it by heart, it was like hearing it again for the first time.
Family stories are like that. Even though we have heard them many times, they never wear out. Instead, they continue to delight us. But family stories do more than simply pass the time by amusing us. They help us to know who we are and they give our life shape.
This fact struck me a week ago as my family set up our Christmas tree. As we got the boxes of ornaments out, I carefully set them on the coffee table for everyone to hang. But I didn't only set them out - Linda, at times the kids, and I told stories about the ornaments as they would emerge from filmy pieces of tissue paper - not all of the ornaments - some of them are just that - ornaments - but some of them are really stories, ready to be taken up and told anew. That's the ornament I got from a church youth group. Here's the ornament from Annette (a friend who died). This one is from Daniel's first Christmas - do you remember that Christmas - we were so tired by the time we opened presents. This one is from when my Mom was a little girl. Some the stories are so immediate and so important that only one of us is allowed to put it on the tree.
This storytelling is what, in the art world, they call "provenance." Provenance is the history or the story of who has owned a certain piece of art. And art is always worth more if someone important has owned it or if its story of how it got to you is interesting or exciting. Provenance tells us what something is, where it came from, and why it is significant. And while our ornaments aren't worth all that much money (well, except from my highly prized Detroit Pistons 1990 NBA Championship ornament!), the stories we tell about them aren't really about the ornaments - they are about us. When my grandmother would tell her myriad of stories (the story of when her Uncle Tell was in the buggy accident, the story of when they went for a family walk on Sunday afternoon and my Dad who left with nothing in his mouth or pocket, having stopped at no store, returned with a wad of chewing gum in his mouth, the story of being at the Taj Mahal and being moved to tears by its beauty), when she would tell those stories, when we tell the stories with our Christmas ornaments, we are not giving the provenance about ornaments or famous places to visit, we are giving the provenance of ourselves. Who are we? How did we get here? What makes us so significant? This is why we tell family stories.
Advent is one of our most significant times of telling family stories - and I don't merely mean the stories that our families tell about our own Advent preparations and Christmas celebrations (remember the time when the furnace went out on Christmas day? remember when Dad used to slowly peel back the bed sheet that covered the big presents (how did Santa know where we kept the spare sheets?)?) The family stories that we tell in Advent are our family stories of faith. Remember when the prophets announced the hope of salvation during the grimmest days of exile? Remember when John the Baptist called people to get ready? Remember when Mary got the news that she was going to have a baby and then she visited Elizabeth? By telling and retelling these stories we make them our own. Of course, I was not alive when my Uncle David purloined the peanut, but through the telling and retelling of that story, a story I now tell, that story shapes me. It catches me up in its themes of trust, forgiveness, and redemption. Likewise, we were not around in the time of the prophets or the Nativity, but by telling and retelling them, we make them our own. They catch us up with their themes of hope, peace, joy, and love. The stories of Advent do not only tell us who Jesus was - they tell us who we are, where we come from, and why we are so significant.
That is why today we have arranged for the stories today to be told in as many voices as possible. Children's voices, youth voices, adult voices, high voices, deep voices, voices that have told the story countless times, voices that are telling the story for the first time. For it is in the telling and retelling of these family stories that we are caught up in them and that we make them our own. As we tell and retell these family stories, we not only hear them again, but we again learn our provenance - for our history is longer than our lives and they are held by One greater than us. For it is in telling these family stories that we know who we are, where we have come from, and why we are so significant.