Symbols of Celebration

Some holidays, such as X-mas and Valentines Day, are external. Anniversaries, by comparison, are internal. By internal, we mean that Anniversaries happen because throughout the year, two people were committed to building a relationship. Other holidays come and go whether or not anybody expends any effort — they’re on the calendar no matter what.

In other words, an Anniversary is the result of two people’s continued determination and commitment to each other. It is a celebration of personal and shared accomplishment, and, in our opinion, that celebration should elicit the most attention from couples, family, and friends. Partnership, marriage, life commitment, hand-fasting, or however else one might refer to mutual commitment, should be on the top of the celebration list. For us, it is.

During the year, we spend time developing elaborate celebration plans for when our Anniversary month rolls around. We decorate our home, plan special parties, and commemorate each Anniversary as a milestone in our journey toward a long, joyful, shared life. Pictured is our Anniversary ornament tree (we know it looks like a X-mas tree, but really, it’s not).

From our very first Anniversary, we searched for ways to make our yearly celebration meaningful and memorable. To us, our first marked a full cycle of living — a completion of four seasons, involving, in each season, daily communication, compromise, and harmonic friendship. We felt we deserved more than the common dinner and a movie. We wanted our celebration to represent and reward our shared effort. For guidance, we pulled out our 1975 Hallmark Datebook that listed all the Anniversary symbols, year-by- year. It was a wonderful tool. The first year was paper, carnations, and peridot.

From those three elements we devised a texture and a color with which to plan our special day. We chose pink carnations, which combined well with the brilliant green of peridot. It was a lovely palette for creating memories.

As years went by, however, we began to realize that our precious little Hallmark Anniversary list had some disappointing limits. It listed gifts and symbols for years 1-15, but then skipped to 20, and then skipped again to every 5 to 10 years after that — as if years 16 through 19 or, for example, years 51 or 68, were not as important. Certainly somewhere out there was the complete list, right? So, we began searching for Anniversary gift lists, and the searching turned into collecting. We snipped them from books, magazines, the Internet — any little reference that could possibly serve as an idea for future celebrations. We discovered that there were dozens of Anniversary symbol/gift lists, but none was consistent with any other. And even more frustrating, many of these lists used the same elements (lots of diamonds) for several different years. Laziness? Greed, perhaps?

Pictured: On our 13th Anniversary — the Lace, Hollyhock, and Citrine Anniversary.

Our frustration was soothed a bit because we found that no list claimed to be the final authority on the matter. In fact, many sources indicated that their list was only to be used as a guide, a “suggestion” of “gifts to buy” for each Anniversary (the majority of the lists available were created by merchants to generate sales). Florists, jewelers, stationary stores, and others all recognized the profit to be made in encouraging couples to exchange gifts as a part of the Anniversary celebration. Since we had (and still have) no intention to exchange gifts as part of our tradition, we felt completely justified in mixing, matching and otherwise adopting cultural celebration ideas to create our own full list.

Because we wanted each Anniversary to be special, unique, and memorable, we felt the elements also needed to be special, unique, and memorable. And since there were so many lists, we began going through them, one-by-one, and eventually compiled one master reference list that had unique elements for each year.

Pictured is our 12th Anniversary; Linen, Peony, and Hawk’s Eye.

In the event that we live to be 127 years old (it could happen), we planned the list to continue to the 90th Anniversary. And while the idea of us celebrating our 90th may be a long shot, on December 15, 2013, one couple, Karam and Kartari Chand, celebrated their 88th Anniversary—their Cloth, Borage, and Ametrine year. And, in two more years, they will celebrate something no other couple on record has ever celebrated: the Jadeite Jubilee. We are looking forward to our milestone Jubilee Celebrations. Starting with the Silver Jubilee on the 25th Anniversary, Jubilees occur every 5 years thereafter.

Below we’ve posted our complete Anniversary Year-by-Year list. We intend it to be an inspiration and resource for couples planning Anniversary celebrations, as well as for family and friends who’d like to join in celebrating and honoring their loved ones’ commitments.

This list is also a wonderful guide if your tradition involves exchanging gifts. With the exception of bloodstone and Hawk’s eye, the first 15 symbols, flowers, and stones are taken directly from the “traditional lists.” The remainder of the list is a combination of traditional, modern, and various international lists. Also, when possible, we chose symbols that were non-exploitative. For example, the 12th could have been silk or linen, and we chose linen. That said, on the 14th, we kept ivory, the traditional symbol. Since we mainly use the elements as symbols and as guidelines for color, we would only use ivory as our color element.

Note: The “origin” columns contain notes to elements for which we could verify one or more origins (key below).

* Jade Jubilee in the US and Germany; Coral Jubilee in the UK.
Key to origin of symbols: ~ UK/US; + Wales; ^ Germany; # France; > Russia; Non-Marked symbols signify mixed or unverifiable origins.

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