St. Patrick’s Day is traditionally a day for Irish-Americans to celebrate their heritage (and, as the old line goes, everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day). But whether you’re Irish, Italian, Chinese, Australian, Egyptian or any other ethnicity, every day can be a celebration through learning your family’s history. Here’s how:

• Research Your Family Name - Using Google and online tools (About.com also has a great list of where to start), research your last name and see what you can come up with. You may find long-lost relatives, famous connections, name meanings, countries or origin and more.
• Create A Family Tree - Starting with your immediate family, make a family tree and branch out. Record names, birth dates, death dates, marriage dates, and more. You can find great tools at My Heritage, Genealogy.com and Ancestry.com. If your ancestors came through Ellis Island, make sure to check out EllisIsland.org for passenger records.
• Record Stories From Older Generations - Whether writing them down or recording them onto video, make sure to collect stories from the older generation in your family so you can pass them down to a younger generation who many never get to meet them.
• Gather Family Recipes - Food is central to many cultures, so gather family recipes to also pass down to the newer generation. You may want to gather them into a book to give to all your family members.
• Hold On To Traditions - Make sure you hold on to past traditions, whether it’s food, holiday celebrations or just small things like gathering for dinner on Sundays. Don’t forget to add your own traditions, as well.
• Visit Birthplaces Or Old Neighborhoods - This can be a great way to connect to older generations. Visit the neighborhoods where your family grew up or where they arrived to to America. Go to the local libraries and see if they have historical archives, or see if the town has a historical society. Some places even have museums. Take pictures, and share them with family members who used to live there to see how much things have changed.
• Connect With Long Lost Or Distant Family Members - The Internet makes finding people easier than ever. Visiting the genealogy sites mentioned above may help you find people in the same area with the same surname, or even try using MySpace, Facebook or Friendster to find family members you haven’t seen in ages.
• Visit Cultural Museums - Find out more about how past generations lived by visiting cultural museums, which could be found in major cities and points of entry for immigrants. In New York, for instance, you have Ellis Island and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, as well as various museums dedicated to different ethnicities.
• Read Books Or Watch Videos About Where Your Family Comes From - The library and Internet are a wealth of information. You will more likely find videos at a public library than Blockbuster, or you may even find some shows on the Travel Channel. And if you can afford both the cost and travel, visit there!
• Write Down What You Learn - The best way to retain all the information you gathered is to write it all down. Tip Diva is in the process of taking such information and putting into a website for her family.

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