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The Traditions of Christmas

The traditions of Christmas in America have their roots in many lands, a reflection perhaps of the many nationalities and cultures that make up our nation of immigrants. In this blog we will take a look at the traditions emanating from Scandinavia and Spain.

In Sweden, pagan customs mingled with Christian ritual. In heathen times, it was believed that at Christmas the dead returned to earth, so food and drink were set out for them. Today, children set out food for Santa Claus.

In villages throughout Sweden young girls vie each year for the honor of portraying Saint Lucia on Dec. 13. On that day, a young girl clad in white with a crown of candles on her hair is followed by other young people carrying burning candles as sleeping families are awakened at dawn with an offering of wheat cakes and coffee.

Of course, the famous Scandinavian smorgasbord of cheeses, breads, salads and meats is replicated at holiday open houses and gatherings throughout America each Christmas season.

After weeks of Christmas preparations, homes in Finland are ready for holiday celebrations by noon on Christmas Day. A straw framework, decorated with paper stars suggestive of heaven, is suspended from the ceiling. Lighted from below by the glow of firelight and the Christmas tree, the framework produces a mysterious effect. Straw is heaped on the floor and, like the Christ Child, the children sleep on this manger-like bed.

In honor of Christmas Eve celebrations, each member of the Finnish family takes a traditional sauna or steam bath. After the sauna, all gather about the table while the head of the family solemnly reads the Christmas prayer and sermon. Little children visit other homes during the evening, but return early to see if the man dressed as a yule goat, Father Christmas, has left any presents for them.

Throughout Spain, Christmas is a time of devout religious ceremony that begins on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8. Before midnight Mass on Christmas, little Spanish children dress in peasant costumes and enact an age-old Christmas Eve tradition of dancing around the Nativity scene to the musical accompaniment of tambourines.

The Christmas observance ends with the children receiving their gifts on Jan. 6. The gifts are said to be left by the Magi passing through on their way to Bethlehem. In the big cities, elaborate parades are held honoring the Three Kings.

Spanish children have no Christmas tree and do not hang up their stockings on Christmas Eve. Instead they hide slippers and shoes for Balthasar and the Wise Men to fill with goodies.

The Traditions of Christmas

Many of the most cherished Christmas traditions have their roots in Germany. In Europe from time immemorial evergreen trees were brought into homes during the winter as symbols of unending life. It was in the Black Forest of Germany that the evergreens were first used as part of Christmas. And when Alsace was German, the tradition of adorning the fragrant firs and spruces with sparkling glass balls and garlands of tinsel began.

The colorful Advent calendars, with little windows to open for each day of the season, also originated in Germany as did the evergreen Advent wreath with four candles that is displayed in many homes with one candle lighted each Sunday until Christmas Eve.

Father Christmas, the kindly bearer of gifts, originated in the Teutonic lands and in Austria good Saint Nicholas parades through the streets in bishop’s regalia.

The Ceppo was the early Italian equivalent of the Christmas tree. Constructed of cardboard and three or four shelves, it was pyramidal in shape and stood about three feet tall. At the top, a pine cone or puppet was placed. Wax candles were lit along the sides and at the bottom, a Baby Jesus, made of wax or plaster, lay in a cradle amidst shepherds, saints and angels. The shelves held candy, fruit and small presents. Objects similar to the Ceppo often are displayed in American homes today, sometimes with the heat of candles placed on the lowest level providing heated air currents to turn an upper level causing chimes to strike.

In France, on Christmas Eve a glass of wine is poured over the Yule Log before it is ignited, and a late supper, to be eaten after midnight Mass, may be cooked over the blaze. In cities, where fireplaces are not common, the tradition is maintained by eating cakes shaped like logs and covered with chocolate icing to resemble tree bark. The luxurious meal eaten following midnight Mass consists of oysters and special wines and sausages. In some American homes, a light meal of oyster stew may be a holiday highlight following midnight Mass.

Father Christmas, the kindly bearer of gifts, originated in the Teutonic lands and in Austria good Saint Nicholas parades through the streets in bishop’s regalia.

Police, Volunteers Work Together for Community

Sparked by the Omaha Police Department’s northwest precinct, volunteers from the community joined together last Saturday to beautify an Omaha neighborhood. More importantly they showed that police and community members can work together for the common good.

The cleanup focused on North 48th Street from Taylor to Sahler Streets.

“The discussion started at an Empowerment Network Omaha 360 weekly meeting,” said Jim Hubbard, northwest precinct crime prevention specialist. “Various members of the community, elected officials, representatives from nonprofits and the Police Department started a discussion, and we kept the ball rolling as a team.”

The goal of the event was to reduce crime in the neighborhood, promote ownership of the neighborhood among residents, encourage productive neighborhood partnerships and create a safe area for youths to walk during Halloween for trick-or-treating.

About 60 volunteers from across Omaha joined neighborhood residents in the cleanup effort. Volunteers included representatives of the Police Department’s northwest precinct, Benson Plant Rescue, Black Police Officers Association, Embrace the Nations, Empowerment Network, Keep Omaha Beautiful, Landmark Group, Dino’s Storage, More Than Just a Village Academy, Omaha Home for Boys, Omaha Public Schools and the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Real Estate’s Hot New Sector: Storage Units

It’s a good time to be in the storage unit business: Rents are rising, vacancies are limited and competition has been muted due to limited new construction, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Storage unit companies are finding business is booming at a time when other commercial real estate sectors are still mostly flat. Investors are buying up shares in storage unit companies too; Extra Space Storage Inc. saw its stock rise 33 percent in the past year. The Salt Lake City-based company reports that 94.5 percent of its space was occupied at the end of the second quarter, up from 92.1 percent one year prior. Public Storage, which is the largest publicly-traded storage firm, reported a 7 percent increase in rental income year-over-year.

The number of self-storage locations in the United States is more than triple the number of McDonald’s outlets. Seeing opportunity, some investment firms are rushing to complete new projects, although storage facilities tend to take years to build. For example, Carlyle Group LP is spending $80 million to build new facilities in Southern California, the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.

The industry’s stability may be thanks to the fact that storage space is in demand in good times and bad. Some in the industry use the 4Ds – death, divorce, downsizing and dislocation – as reasons consumers might utilize their services. Because these events aren’t necessarily tied to the economic cycle, the industry “isn’t recession-proof, but it is recession-resistant,” says Ryan Burke, an analyst at real-estate research firm Green Street Advisors.

Analysts said storage can be a good long-term business because once people rent storage units, they are unlikely to move to a different facility even if the rent is slightly lower, and they tend to keep the units longer than they anticipated.

Dino’s Storage owns facilities in Omaha, Bellevue, Papillion and Elkhorn, Nebraska, Bondurant and Des Moines, Iowa, and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Stealing or Sharing?

It’s no secret that young people like to consume entertainment they don’t necessarily pay for.

Money magazine notes that when business and tech types talk about this reality, they tend to use neutral or even flattering language: Millennials, they say, like to “swap” files and “share” subscription passwords. After all, super-earnest, bike-commuting, coffee-sipping twenty-somethings don’t look like dangerous criminals. And let’s face it, no business wants to alienate the work-force’s largest generational cohort, with billions, if not trillions, worth of spending ahead of it.

Now, however, some Wall Street analysts have decided to come right out and use another S word – steal – in discussing the problems facing some traditional media enterprises.

“The millennials are a generation that grew up (and will likely grow old) ‘sharing’ (read stealing) passwords for access to content if it continues to be ignored,” wrote analysts Mike McCormack, Scott Goldman and Tudor Mustata in a note to clients. “We believe it is the most significant cause of the declining pay TV subscriber base.”

The problem, the analysts suggest, is that all this sharing or stealing could quickly destroy the cable TV business. Similar trends already have gutted the music and news industries, Money magazine reports.

The analysts argue password sharing is already “the most significant cause of the declining pay TV subscriber base.” They compare the current situation to a time when people rigged access to cable with “illegal cable drops, third-party set tops and reprogrammed satellite cards.” Revenues returned only when the industry cracked down.

Of course, no one likes to be called a crook. Millennials might counter that the situation isn’t totally black and white. The music industry has evolved, and sharing streaming TV passwords isn’t clearly against the rules. Passwords for the streaming service HBO Now, for instance, are limited to a household, but the company has been vague about what that means. Netflix, Amazon and others all have policies that similarly attempt to both acknowledge and limit sharing.

The solution, the analysts say, is for companies to adopt tougher rules with emphasis on “authentication limits” – restrictions on how many people can use a log in at the same time. Some sites like Netflix and Hulu already do this.

The analysts acknowledge the scope of the problem – and the fact that it’s not just millennials. People of all ages have used or allowed others to use content passwords, they note.

Whatever Happened to Common Sense?

Lately schools seem to be “giving out suspensions like they’re pencils,” says Jacqueline Burt at The Stir, with arguably well-meaning students being punished for a smorgasbord of what critics are calling trite and ridiculous reasons, ranging from giving hugs to Tebowing.

Here are a plethora of examples:

A creative haircut. Patrick Gonzalez, a 12-year-old student at Woodlake Hills Middle School in San Antonio, recently received an in-school suspension after his enthusiasm for NBA star Matt Bonner went too far. Gonzalez had the San Antonio Spurs forward’s likeness shaved into his hair, which school officials claimed was a violation of the school dress code. To return to school, Gonzalez had to shave his head bald, removing traces of the tribute. But all was not for naught: Bonner was so flattered by Gonzalez’s devotion that he called it “the nicest thing a fan has ever done for me,” and sent the middle schooler playoff tickets and autographed swag.

Hugging a friend. Florida middle schooler Nick Martinez thought nothing of giving his best friend, a female student, a quick hug between classes – until he was suspended for the embrace. As it turns out, Southwest Middle School in Palm Bay has a strict no-hugging policy, in order to prevent harassment and keep students focused on learning.

Tebowing. Matt Bonner isn’t the only athlete indirectly responsible for a student’s suspension. A group of high schoolers in Riverhead, N.Y., was suspended after mimicking NFL quarterback Tim Tebow’s “Tebowing” stance in the hallway of Riverhead High School. Four boys struck the kneeling pose between classes, inspiring upwards of 40 other classmates to join in. School officials cited the quartet for causing a traffic jam in the hallway, an apparent violation of school rules.

Growing hair for charity. Michigan teen J.T. Gaskin is a leukemia survivor, and he knows firsthand the crucial confidence that a wig from the Locks of Love charity can give an ailing cancer patient who has gone bald. After hearing that a friend’s sister had been diagnosed with cancer, Gaskin decided to grow the 10-inch ponytail required by Locks of Love for a donation in her honor. But Gaskin was only able to grow his hair about 2.5 inches before he was suspended by his school, Madison Academy, for violating a dress code stipulation that boys’ hair be “off the collar, off the ears, and out of the eyes.” Despite the punishment, Gaskin said he has no plans to stop growing his hair in preparation for a donation.

Singing a hit song. Hip-hop group LMFAO’s popular single “I’m Sexy and I Know It” is “so catchy, even a 6-year-old boy can pick it up, says Amanda Sloane at HLN TV. That’s what happened in Colorado, where young D’Avonte Meadows started singing the tune – which includes lyrics like “Girl, look at that body” – to a classmate in his school’s lunch line, and was promptly suspended for sexual harassment. While the lyrics were undeniably inappropriate, it’s easy to see how the student is familiar with the track. After all, it’s featured in a frequently aired M&M’s commercial, and was parodied by Elmo on Sesame Street.

Calling a teacher ‘cute’. A 9-year-old North Carolina boy was also suspended for arguably dubious claims of sexual harassment, only his offense was calling a teacher “cute.” A substitute teacher overhead Emanyea Lockett give out the compliment chatting with a friend and reported him.

Chivalry. A student at Southampton Middle School in Virginia was given a one-day suspension for holding an exterior door open for an adult who had her hands full. The student knew the adult, but the school has a policy that prohibits letting a visitor in before he or she is vetted by a security camera. According to the school district’s superintendent, the strict rule is essential to ensure that the high-tech security system is effective.

Disarming a would-be shooter. In February 2013, three high school students were suspended from school for disarming a would-be shooter on the school bus. The teens, all students at Cypress Lake High School in Fort Myers, Florida, were on a school bus when two students got into a heated argument. One of them then pulled a loaded .22 caliber revolver on the other, and aimed it at his head. The three unnamed students didn’t wait to watch someone die. Instead, they tackled and disarmed the suspect, who was later arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The three students who prevented a possible murder did not receive a hero’s welcome at their school. Instead, they were suspended for the remainder of the week because they were involved in a gun “incident.”

Brandishing a pizza slice. A ten-year-old boy at the David Youree Elementary School in Smyrna, Tennessee, was punished with social isolation at lunch time because he brandished a pizza slice at his school friends. It wasn’t just any pizza slice, of course. As Nashville’s News 2 Investigates reported, it was a half-eaten slice of pizza that vaguely looked like a gun. When a fellow student commented on the slice’s resemblance to a gun, the 10-year-old picked it up and pretended to fire shots into the air. School officials suspended him.

Strawberry mountains. Josh Welch, 7, got in trouble at Baltimore’s Park Elementary School when he tried to make a strawberry mountain. Josh, who has ADHD decided that it would be fun to mash up his strawberry tart and sculpt a mountain. Being only 7, things didn’t go quite as planned. As Josh explained, “All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but, it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun (kind of).”

Accidental teacher touching. Seventh grader Je’Terra Bowie was suspended for 180 days from Wilkinson Middle School in Detroit for allegedly accidentally touching her teacher as she reached back to stretch, WDIV reports. “I didn’t know she stopped behind me,” Bowie told the station. “She stopped, and I stretched back. I turned back and said, ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to.'” After the teacher demanded Bowie leave the classroom, other students wrote letters asserting the incident was an accident. The teacher maintains the poke to her inner thigh was not an accident.

Check what you buy. Jack Persyn, 13, was in chess club before class when he discovered a short knife in the bag he brought to his Georgia school, station WXIA reports. Persyn’s aunt had bought the bag from a yard sale, and gave the purchase to the teen without checking inside first, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports. After Persyn told his Lanier Middle School teacher that he accidentally brought the weapon to class, the teen received four days of in-school suspension, a punishment his father Bill Persyn says is excessive.
“There was never a safety issue,” Persyn told WXIA. “No harm was done. It was a genuine honest mistake, yet he got pulled out of class for four days. I can see a one-hour detention if they had to do something, but this is nonsensical.”

Failure to report bullying. Essance McDougald, a student at Lithonia High School in Lithonia, Ga., claims she was suspended for not reporting to school officials that she was being bullied, CBS Atlanta reports. McDougald alleges two female students sent her threatening letters and locked her in a school bathroom.
WSBTV reports that the student wrote a three-page letter to her school counselor, but was still suspended for two days. McDougald’s grandmother told WSBTV that since her granddaughter is too afraid to return to school, she is considering home-schooling the teen.

Pink (as for cancer) hair. South Carolina mother Denise Sargent is upset that her daughter Rheanne was suspended for dying her hair pink to support National Breast Cancer Awareness month. The Belton Middle School student tells WYFF that she wanted to recognize those who have battled cancer. But the school’s assistant principal said she was violating the dress code, which prohibits non-human hair color, and placed Rheanne in in-school suspension.

The butter knife. A Massachusetts middle school student was suspended after she brought a butter knife to school in her lunch, Fox 25 Boston reports. According to the 13-year-old’s mother, Morgan LaPlume was taken to the office and handed a one-day suspension after Wamsutta Middle School’s assistant principal spotted the butter knife, the Sun Chronicle reports. LaPlume packed the butter knife with her lunch in order to cut a pear, explaining to Fox 25 that she can’t bite into the fruit because of her braces.

Digital Library Opening in November

A technology lovers dream is coming to Omaha. And it’s all free to the public. Expectations are that Do Space, a philanthropic funded digital library, will open Nov. 7 on the southwest corner of 72nd & Dodge – Omaha’s prime crossroads intersection.

Do Space DigitalLibrary will offer a plethora of computers – Macs and PCs – along with high-speed Internet access, 3D printers, digital TVs and desktop work stations equipped with dual monitors. Rounding out the offerings will be the latest software from basic Photoshop to advanced computer-assisted drawing. Do Space will include a 3D printing lab, surrounded by glass, where people can learn how to use the printers and make inventions come to life.

Sue Morris, president of Heritage Services, the nonprofit group behind the project, says Do Space will be open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Heritage Services raised the funds for the project with donations led by ome of Omaha’s top philanthropists. The funds are expected to pay for renovating the former Borders bookstore at a cost of around $5 million, plus $2 million in technology and operations for four years.

The Community Information Trust, a private nonprofit corporation, was established to run Do Space.

Do Space is being wired for internet access with the capacity for hundreds of people to use it at a time, on Do Space equipment or their own, without slowdowns. “We will offer the public free access to ultrafast gigabit bandwidth,” said Rebecca Stavick, executive director of Do Space.

The facility also will have video gaming equipment for teen-agers with an interest in learning how to create games. Users will have access to normally expensive software. The space is intended to be useful to a wide range of people, Stavick said – “little kids, families, seniors, middle schoolers, job seekers, working people looking to upgrade their skills.” There will be a hangout space for teens, a tech help desk and a conference room that can be reserved, plus other group work spaces.

Young children can have high-tech story time with parents. Bigger kids are likely to have a workshop in which they learn how to use 3D printers by making their own creations.

“Like a public library, we serve everybody,” Stavick said. “From someone who has never used computers before, to an advanced programmer who knows three programming languages and wants to learn more.”
Metro Community College will offer classes and computer user training on the building’s second floor, beginning in January. Conversations also are under way with public school officials.

Users do not have to be from Douglas County to use Do Space. The digital library will issue Do Space cards.

Ordinary Folks Extraordinary in 9/11 Crisis

The actions of a planeload of passengers and a town full of wonderful people on 9/11 are a testament to the human spirit. Here’s an abbreviated account of what happened in Gander, Newfoundland, and nearby communities in the wake of the terrorist attack. It is a true story, written by a flight attendant on Delta Flight 15.

On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, we were about five hours out of Frankfurt, flying over the North Atlantic. I was told to go to the cockpit, immediately. On arrival the captain handed me a printed message from Delta’s main office in Atlanta. It said: “All airways over the continental United States are closed to commercial air traffic. Land ASAP at the nearest airport. Advise your destination.”

The captain determined that the nearest airport was 400 miles behind us in Gander, Newfoundland. He requested and immediately received approval for a route change from Canadian traffic control. A few minutes later word came from Atlanta about the hijackings. We told the passengers the plane had a simple instrument problem and that we needed to land at the nearest airport to have it checked out. We promised to give more information after landing.

When we landed about 40 minutes later, we found there were already about 20 other airplanes on the ground from all over the world. After we parked, the captain made the following announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, you must be wondering if all these airplanes around us have the same instrument problem as we have. The reality is that we are here for another reason.” He then explained the little we knew about the situation in the U.S. There were loud gasps and stares of disbelief. The captain informed passengers that ground control in Gander told us to stay put.

The Canadian Government was in charge of our situation and no one was allowed to get off the aircraft. No one on the ground was allowed to come near any of the planes. Only airport police would come around periodically, look us over and go on to the next plane. In the next hour or so more planes landed and Gander ended up with 53 airplanes from all over the world, 27 of which were U.S. commercial jets.

Meanwhile, bits of news started to come in over the aircraft radio and for the first time we learned that airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon in DC. People were
trying to use their cell phones, but were unable to connect due to a different cell system in Canada . Some did get through, but were only able to get to the Canadian operator who would tell them that the lines to the U.S. were either blocked or jammed.

Sometime in the evening the news filtered to us that the World Trade Center buildings had collapsed and that a fourth hijacking had resulted in a crash. By now the passengers were emotionally and physically
exhausted, not to mention frightened, but everyone stayed amazingly calm. We had only to look out the window at the 52 other stranded aircraft to realize that we were not the only ones in this predicament.

We had been told earlier that they would be allowing people off the planes one plane at a time. At 6 p.m. Gander airport told us that our turn to deplane would be 11 a.m. the next morning. Passengers were not happy, but they simply resigned themselves to this news without much noise and started to prepare themselves to spend the night on the airplane.

Gander had promised us medical attention, if needed, water, and lavatory servicing. And they were true to their word. Fortunately we had no medical situations to worry about. We did have a young lady who was 33 weeks into her pregnancy. We took really good care of her. The night passed without incident despite the uncomfortable sleeping arrangements.

About 10:30 on the morning of the 12th a convoy of school buses showed up. We got off the plane and were taken to the terminal where we went through Immigration and Customs and then registered with the Red Cross.

After that the crew and passengers were separated. The crew was taken in vans to a small hotel. We had no idea where our passengers were going. We learned from the Red Cross that the town of Gander has a population of 10,400 people and they had about 10,500 passengers to take care of from all the airplanes that were forced into Gander! We were told to just relax at the hotel and we would be contacted when the U.S. airports opened again, but not to expect that call for a while.

We found out the total scope of the terror back home only after getting to our hotel and turning on the TV, 24 hours after it all started. Meanwhile, we had lots of time on our hands and found that the people of Gander were extremely friendly. They started calling us the “plane people.” We enjoyed their hospitality, explored the town of Gander and ended up having a pretty good time.

Two days later, we got that call and were taken back to the Gander airport. Back on the plane, we were reunited with the passengers and found out what they had been doing for the past two days. What we found out was incredible.

Gander and all the surrounding communities (within about a 75 kilometer radius) had closed all high schools, meeting halls, lodges and any other large gathering places. They converted all these facilities to mass lodging areas for all the stranded travelers. Some had cots set up, some had mats with sleeping bags and pillows set up. All the high school students were required to volunteer their time to take care of the “guests.” Our 218 passengers ended up in a town called Lewisporte, about 45 kilometers from Gander where they were put up in a high school. All the elderly passengers were taken to private homes.

The young pregnant lady was put up in a private home right across the street from a 24-hour urgent care facility. There was a dentist on call and both male and female nurses remained with the crowd for the duration.

Phone calls and e-mails to the U.S. and around the world were available to everyone once a day. During the day, passengers were offered “excursion” trips. Some people went on boat cruises of the lakes and harbors. Some went for hikes in the local forests. Local bakeries stayed open to make fresh bread for the guests. Food was prepared by all the residents and brought to the schools. People were driven to restaurants of their choice and offered wonderful meals. Everyone was given tokens for local laundry mats to wash their clothes, since luggage was still on the aircraft. In other words, every single need was met for those stranded travelers.

Passengers were crying while telling us these stories. Finally, when they were told that U.S. airports had reopened, they were delivered to the airport right on time and without a single passenger missing or late. The local Red Cross had all the information about the whereabouts of each and every passenger and knew which plane they needed to be on and when all the planes were leaving. They coordinated everything beautifully. It was absolutely incredible.

When passengers came on board, it was like they had been on a cruise. Everyone knew each other by name. They were swapping stories of their stay, impressing each other with who had the better time. Our
flight to Atlanta looked like a chartered party flight. The crew just stayed out of their way. It was mind-boggling. Passengers had totally bonded and were calling each other by their first names, exchanging phone numbers, addresses and email addresses.

And then a very unusual thing happened. One of our passengers approached me and asked if he could make an announcement over the PA system. We never, ever allow that. But this time was different. I said “of course” and handed him the mike. He picked up the PA and reminded everyone about what they had just gone through in the last few days. He reminded them of the hospitality they had received at the hands of total strangers. He continued by saying that he would like to do something in return for the good folks of Lewis Porte.

He said he was going to set up a trust fund under the name of Delta 15 (our flight number). The purpose of the trust fund is to provide college scholarships for the high school students of Lewis Porte. He asked for donations of any amount from his fellow travelers. When the paper with donations got back to us with the amounts, names, phone numbers and addresses, the total was for more than $14,000!

The gentleman, a doctor from Virginia, promised to match the donations and to start the administrative work on the scholarship. He also said that he would forward this proposal to Delta Corporate and ask them to
donate as well.

Today the trust fund is at more than $1.5 million and has assisted 134 students in college education.

I just wanted to share this story because we need good stories right now. It gives me a little bit of hope to know that some people in a faraway place were kind to some strangers who literally dropped in on them. It reminds me how much good there is in the world.

Generations Forged By Events of Their Time

Each of the four major generational groups in America – Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials – have been forged by varied influences and have greatly different values and expectations.

Traditionalists, those born from 1900 to 1945, were shaped by the Great Depression, two world wars and the dawn of the space age. They lived through or were shaped by parents who survived the Great Depression. The Traditionalists experienced hard times while growing, were followed by times of prosperity.

Baby Boomers, born 1946 to 1964, were shaped by the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution and the Cold War. They include the post-war babies who grew up to be the radicals of the 70s and yuppies of the 80s. As children they were promised “the American dream” and they pursue that promise. As a result they are seen as being greedy, materialistic and ambitious.

Generation X, born 1965 to 1980, were forged by Watergate, the energy crisis, dual income and single parent families. They are the first generation of latchkey kids and have been influenced by the end of the Cold War, working mothers and an increased divorce rate. They are considered to be the first generation that will not do as well financially as their parents did.

Millennials, born 1981 to 2000, grew up in an era of AIDS, 9/11, terrorist attacks and school shootings. They were more sheltered than previous generations as parents strived to protect them from the evils of the world. They came of age in a period of economic expansion and were the first generation of children with schedules.

While Traditionalists considered education a dream, Baby Boomers looked on it as a birthright, Generation X saw it as a way to get there and the Millennials think of it as an incredible expense.

Traditionalists focused on family and community, the Boomers zeroed in on success, Generation X worried about time and the Millennials seem to be all about individuality. Traditionalists dealt with money by paying cash and emphasizing saving, while Baby Boomers believed in buy now, pay later. Generation X returned to cautious spending and savings emphasis, while Millennials simply earn to spend.

Traditionalists believe in hard work, respect for authority and put seniority and company first. Baby Boomers are driven to be workaholics with long hours and a solid work ethic. Generation X believes in working smarter, not longer and are more self-reliant while Millennials are into multitasking and have an entrepreneurial bent.

Traditionalists think of Hoover Dam when considering technology. Baby Boomers think of the microwave, while Generation X thinks of what they can hold in their hand – a cell phone or PDA. Millennials consider technology to be more intangible and communicate via the internet, picture phones and e-mail.

Traditionalists are more likely to communicate one-on-one or by writing a memo. Boomers grew up with touch-tone phones and a call me anytime attitude, while Generation X has cell phones and a cal me only at work attitude.

Traditionalists are likely to be discrete, Boomers diplomatic, Generation X blunt, direct and immediate and Millennials are polite and rely on voice mail and e-mail as primary tools, though they will communicate in person for very important messages.

What motivates the generations? For Traditionalists it is respect and security. Baby Boomers want to be valued and needed and see money as the ultimate reward. Generation X wants freedom, no rules and time off. Millennials are motivated by time off and want to work with other bright people.

Family and work are compartmentalized and kept separate by traditionalists, while Baby Boomers and Millennials work to live, not live to work. Millennials value their lifestyle over upward mobility and will reject work promotions that will upset their lifestyle.

How American Homes Have Evolved Since 1994

In 20 years, the American home has evolved quite a bit – it now has more bedrooms and bathrooms, fewer fireplaces, greater outdoor features and it’s a lot more expensive. The average sales price in 1994 was $154,500 compared to the $345,800 average sales price in 2014. A lot has changed in two decades.

SelfStorage.com provided a look at the evolution of newly constructed homes.

More Space. In 2004, 28% of new homes ranged from 1,800 to 2,399 finished square feet. In 2014, 26% of homes fell into that range.

Fewer Fireplaces. In 1994, 59% of new homes had at least one fireplace, in 2014, 49% had no fireplace.

More Bedrooms. In 1994, 58% of new homes had three bedrooms. In 2014, 46% had four or more bedrooms.

More Baths. In 1994, 40% of new homes had two bathrooms. In 2014, 36% had three or more bathrooms.

More Outdoor Features. In 2010, 24% of new homes had a porch or patio. Just four years later 28% had a porch or patio.

More Air Conditioning. In 1994, 79% of new homes had air conditioning. In 2014, that percentage stood at 91%.