Anniversary gift traditions

Gifts for wedding anniversaries are a strange tradition. I don’t mean to say it’s strange to give gifts when there’s something to celebrate. But tradition provides us with a long list of appropriate items to receive as anniversary presents each year. Right from the first anniversary (paper) to the 70th (platinum) we are told what we should be buying each year.

It’s true that most people don’t observe these traditions nowadays, that’s if they ever did. Where the idea came from in the first place is unclear, but it’s evolved over the years until a whole new list of gifts has emerged. These new ‘traditions’ include a new list of more modern and practical gifts for each anniversary, and ones which are more readily available on the high street.

So where you may once have received paper on your first anniversary, the appropriate gift now would be a clock. The precious gems are earlier on the list so diamond has changed from a 60th anniversary gift to a 10th, and instead of waiting 30 years for pearl jewellery, you would now only have to wait 12.

In fact, pearl is an interesting one as it appears twice on the modern list, at both 12 and 80 years. What used to be the pearl anniversary, the 30th, has also been replaced by diamond, which itself appears no less than eight times!

Perhaps the answer is to buy different qualities of the gems each time. So for a 12th anniversary you could buy freshwater pearl jewellery. Freshwater pearls are less rare and therefore less expensive than saltwater pearls, which might be more appropriate for the later anniversary. As for diamonds, some jewellers are now producing items especially for wedding anniversaries. Slightly odd combinations such as diamonds set in tin, that combines both the traditional and modern gifts for 10 years.

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