“One More Christmas”
Almost anyone who scrapbooks for any length of time, comes to the conclusion that they just can not scrapbook “one more Christmas” or “one more birthday.”
The claim is that chronological scrapbookers have this problem. Therefore, you should stop scrapbooking chronologically. Instead you should scrapbook what inspires you. Problem solved.
Not so fast. Just because you decide to start scrapbooking what inspires you instead of chronologically, does not mean that you stop taking photographs or collecting memorabilia in a time-oriented fashion. You may still have photographs from each of your children’s birthdays. You may still mainly take photographs of events. (See chronological scrapbookers are often event-based scrapbookers, too).
What I want to point out is that one function of scrapbooking is to memorialize traditions. To do this, you have memorialize the tradition more than once as evidence that it is a tradition and not just a one time occurrence. Yes, you can memorialize your household’s traditions without being a chronological or event-based scrapbookerr, but it takes more effort.
Instead of complaining about scrapbooking “one more Christmas,” decide what you want to do. If one reason that you scrabpook is to chronicle family traditions, then scrapbook “one more Christmas” even if it is very similar to last year’s Christmas. That is the point of tradition–to do the same thing again and again. There is nothing wrong with that.
Don’t get me wrong, an inspiration-based scrapbooker could also chronicle family traditions, but it might be more challenging. Inspiration-based scrapbookers are already memorializing the everyday, why not scrapbook “one more Christmas?” Start a file of Christmas or whatever the tradition is and after a few years, scrapbook the tradition. You don’t have to scrapbook every Christmas, each year, because that is what the calendar tells you to do.
It is possible to be both a chronological and inspiration based scrapbooker. This message is nothing new. if you follow any of the scrapbooking celebrities, they mainly emphasize scrapbooking by what inspires you or whatever you feel like, yet most were super-excited to get their Project Life 
Stephanie
Stephanie Medley-Rath is a sociologist and scrapbooker who studies scrapbooking and memory keeping. Scrapworthy Lives is a blog focused on her sociological analysis of scrapbooking, with a sprinkling of posts about Stephanie's own scrapbooking projects.
