Modern & Traditional Anniversary Gift List
|
|
As you cast your eye down the wedding anniversary symbols or anniversary year list of gifts, you could be excused in thinking that people in the nineteenth century had a wry sense of humour. You could just imagine some guy giving his wife a lump of aluminium or tin for their tenth anniversary - and then running for his life, but the truth is aluminium was a precious metal back then because of the difficulty and expense of extracting it from it's raw state. A set of aluminium cutlery in Napoleon's day would have been a gift to boast about in the village.
Wedding anniversary traditions have certainly changed a bit since the Industrial Revolution and that change is an ongoing process. To some degree, a glance down any list of wedding anniversaries is looking through a time capsule. Would you rather look down a traditional anniversary gift list and look at where we came from, or do you find your choice from a contemporary anniversary list of years gifts and build your own time capsule?
Lists of wedding anniversary gifts may vary by country. Meanwhile, let the wedding anniversary gifts by year list below be a guide.
Happily married couple exchanging gifts on their wedding anniversary.
Anniversary Symbols Guide - Anniversary Gifts By Year List
|
The Origin of Anniversary Gifts
The origin of giving gifts for specially prescribed wedding aniversaries dates back to the middle ages, though the concept of giving gifts dates back to biblical times when the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar tried to placate a sulky concubine by giving her the population of Israel as an anniversary gift. Too much? Who's to say?
There's no doubt having a list of wedding anniversaries and anniversary gift list makes a husband's life easier. At least he doesn't have to make the grievous error of asking the wife. Just think, the Napoleonic Wars could have been avoided if only the little Corsican hadn't asked Josephine if she'd like something practical for their anniversary. `Tuscany would be nice!' she replied.
Certainly, the traditional meanings to wedding anniversaries are eventually lost in time, but the anniversary year list does speak of a time when lifespans were much shorter and few husbands lived long enough to spring for the diamond anniversary. Isn't modern medicine a wonderful thing?
Spare a thought for our descendants though, a twenty second century anniversary gift list might include trilithium crystals from the moons of Vulcan - for their 150th anniversary. Where will it end? One can but ponder...
Of course, you can always get some wedding anniversary flowers. I suspect that even in the twenty second century, a gift of flowers will be a precious thing. They are for me.
|
|
