As we age, our memories seem more significant, and more vivid.

Holidays are a great time for sharing memories. At our holiday events we inevitably end up in fits of laughter, holding our sides and wiping away tears.

Some of our stories get retold each year. Like the time my dad was using a blowtorch to remove the paint from the window frame and burned my mother’s silk curtains. Or when my sister at 5 years old asked how they trained monkeys to use guns—this was after she heard on television about the guerrilla troops fighting the war in the 1960s.

It doesn’t matter whether we are with our “real” family or with our local family of friends; memories offer an intimate view into others’ perceptions and can be a wonderful bonding experience.

This past holiday with our local family of friends we played “The Voting Game,” a card game intended to reveal the personalities of those who play. It was a lot of fun, and we learned a lot more about how we feel about one another.

Here are some questions that may elicit some good memories at your next family gathering:

“It feels good to be a part of the universe as it shines upon others,” Acorn’s“Family Man” columnist Michael Picarella recently noted.

Why is helping someone an action we associate with the feeling of being happy?

One explanation is that in doing so we experience “vicarious joy,” or the pleasure we get from improving another’s situation or well-being.

Holidays seem to be a time when many of us look to see how we can help others.

Actions can be as simple as putting coins in the kettle for the Salvation Army, dropping off baked goods for an elderly neighbor or driving a friend to an appointment.

Acts of kindness happen all the time between individuals, both friends and strangers. Facebook is filled with stories of one human helping another. And more often than not, the person doing the helping feels they got more out of the experience (vicarious joy) than the person they helped.