The Marriage Files

It’s June, the most popular month for marriage. As a consequence of that, June is also the most popular month for anniversaries. (I’ve always wondered: what’s the most popular month for divorces?) For once in my life, I’m smack in the middle of the bell curve rather than hanging precipitously off one of the ends; my husband K— and I got married in June, too, and we’ve been celebrating June anniversaries ever since.

As you may or may not know, there are traditional gifts associated with each anniversary year. My mother, as part of her doomed effort to teach me social graces, told me about them when I was a child. Seeing as how they were called "traditional" gifts, in my child’s mind I assumed that the origins of the traditions were lost in the mists of time. As it turns out, however, they date from 1922. Go to http://www.traditional-anniversary-gift.com/ and you’ll be informed:

"In 1922 Emily Post wrote her first etiquette book in which she suggested traditional anniversary gifts for the first, fifth, tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth and fiftieth wedding anniversaries. Realizing the importance of wedding anniversaries and the growing trend for family and friends to give traditional anniversary gifts, in 1957 Ms. Post expanded the list to include more anniversary years. The gift list has not changed very much during the past 50 years."

My first question is this: how can one "suggest" a "traditional" gift? Isn’t that kind of like "making" an "antique?" But that’s not really what’s on my mind. What caught my attention was that sentence, "The gift list has not changed very much during the past 50 years." It occurred to me that maybe the list should have changed in that time. After all, marriage sure has changed a lot in the last half century. Two incomes, fewer kids, I’ll-love-and-honor-but-I’ll-pass-on-obey—it’s a whole different marital ball game than when Emily Post wrote her book.

Not only that, but some of the traditional items aren’t even legal or ethical any more. Try to purchase a new ivory trinket (see Year 14) and you could end up in jail. Coral (Year 35) is harvested from endangered reefs, and diamonds (Year 60) are reputed to support war, slavery, terrorism and even worse things. With all that in mind, I formulated a list of new traditional anniversary gifts that I think reflect the priorities, demographics, needs and legal realities of a modern married couple a whole lot better than the old ones. Hey, if Emily Post could do it, so can I! Here it is, with the old traditional gifts for comparison:

Anniversary	Traditional Gift	New Traditional Gift
1	Paper	Gold—they’re gonna need plenty of it, and the sooner, the better
2	Cotton	Charge account at the local hardware store with $200 credit
3	Leather	Drywall
4	Linen	Heating oil
5	Wood	Ten cubic yards mulch or, if a baby is on the way, 10 tons diapers
6	Iron	Two dozen shop clamps, various sizes
7	Wool	100 feet garden hose on a reel
8	Bronze	Bathroom vanity
9	Pottery	Actual plates not made of paper. Hey, a traditional gift that still works!
10	Tin	One year free marriage counseling sessions
11	Steel	Lawn mower
12	Silk	Table saw
13	Lace	Septic pumping
14	Ivory	Vinyl tile
15	Crystal	15 gallons wall paint
20	China	Siding
25	Silver	New roof
30	Pearl	Gutters
35	Coral	Driveway repaving
40	Ruby	Security system
45	Sapphire	High-definition TV
50	Gold	Matching BarcaLoungers
55	Emerald	His and Hers prescription drug discount cards
60	Diamond	Drugs—to hell with the cards!

Another good reason for redesigning the Traditional Gift list is that I always thought it was strange that the valuable stuff (gold, jewels) comes later, long after a couple could achieve any real financial gain by pawning it. I guess that’s the point really—that and the fact that by the time you celebrate your 50th anniversary, precious few of your friends will be alive to have to make the costly purchase. I suppose that’s what bothers me most about the traditional gift list: it seems to benefit the gift givers more than the gift recipients. That’s why gold comes first on my list!

You may be wondering why both the traditional and the new traditional lists have gaps of five years after the 15th anniversary. Speaking from experience, I can say that it’s because long before you reach 15 years of wedded bliss, your anniversary will garner a reaction of "Oh, that again!" from both of you.

Take my last anniversary. K— and I bought ourselves a new rolling kitchen island, and then spent the evening assembling it. After we were done, I said to him, "Are we an old married couple or what? We just spent our anniversary assembling a kitchen cart." I like to think that our marriage is healthy precisely because we can laugh at things like that. The reality is that you, too, will probably be spending some of your anniversaries doing things like retiling the kitchen floor. Why not at least have someone else foot the bill for the project? Had a kitchen cart been on the list of traditional anniversary gifts, we still would have spent our anniversary drowning in domesticity, but at least we’d have gotten the cart for free!

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