A quick history on gift giving
Giving gifts for special occasions and events is a common tradition all over the globe. Whether it is exchanging Christmas gifts, giving your friends and family presents on their birthday or perhaps celebrating a couple’s marriage with wedding presents, giving gifts has a long standing custom in many cultures.
In more recent years, many other events have also become synonymous with giving gifts, so we currently give Christening gifts and Anniversary gifts and even presents for Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, Valentine’s Day plus life events such as graduations and also retirements.
It really is believed that the custom of giving presents extends back to Roman times. They were the very first to celebrate birthdays by having extravagant parties and birthday gifts, and they also enthusiastically celebrated the festival Saturnalia every December.
This week long event happened between 17 and 23 December and saw the Romans visiting family and friends, enjoying feasts and obviously, giving gifts to each other. Famous presents for men and gifts for women included candles, earthenware figures, clothes, books, crockery and also perfumes.
Saturnalia was among the festivals that led to the origin of Xmas. When Christianity started spreading, traditions had been taken from numerous ancient and Pagan festivals. Gift giving ended up being taken from Saturnalia, greenery and lighting from the Roman New Year and also food items from Germanic festival of Yule.
The celebration of Xmas transformed dramatically through the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the period, it involved eating, drinking and carolling for the entire period of what we know now as Advent and also Christmas gifts were given on New Year’s Day. Through the 16th-17th centuries, Christmas time evolved to include far more magnificent feasts and gifts being given on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
Although the festival was stopped by Oliver Cromwell in 1647, it still remained popular however it was the Victorian time which saw Christmas develop into the event which we know today. Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert brought over the custom of Christmas trees from Germany, and the giving of Christmas presents to the entire family grew to be extremely popular. Victorian gift ideas included both useful and ornamental gifts. Christmas gifts for men included slippers, scarves and cigar cases, while females received stationary, aprons in addition to pin cushions. Personalised gifts as well as handmade gifts were extremely popular, with a lot of families spending the dark wintertime evenings creating unique presents for each other.
Christmas isn’t the only event to involve giving gifts, and many other traditions have a rich history of showing love by way of presents. Anniversary gifts are believed to date back to the Middle Ages in Germanic nations. A wife was given a silver wreath by her friends to celebrate 25 years of marriage and they got a gold one to commemorate a 50th anniversary which is where the current phrases come from.
Over the years, many more dates became eligible for anniversary gifts. From the Victorian period, wood became a common gift for the fifth anniversary and also six decades of marriage turned out to be known as a diamond wedding anniversary after celebrations of Queen Victoria’s 60th year as monarch. Other significant anniversary dates celebrated with special anniversary gifts range from the 20th (china), 30th (pearl) and also 40th (ruby), and now you will find modern gifts suitable for almost every wedding anniversary, from the 1st (clocks) to the 100th (10-carat diamond).
Although a few see gift giving as a modern trend, the exchanging of presents has been done for 100′s of years and the traditions behind giving gifts on special occasions are simply as important as the events themselves!
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