A milestone worth celebrating
42nd Anniversary Gifts
Clocks and watches are the traditional forty-second anniversary gifts, with improved real estate as a modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of forty-two years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Clocks, Watches and Mother of Pearl: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A clock with your names on it
Hallmark suggests a grandfather clock with a small engraved glass plate carrying your names and wedding date. If the hallway is already full, a mantel or wall clock engraved the same way will be just as treasured.
A watch, engraved on the back
Choose a watch they’ll want to wear every day, and have the case back engraved with your wedding date and ‘42’. It will be glanced at several hundred times a week, which is more attention than most gifts ever get.
Meet under the clocks
Melburnians have met ‘under the clocks’ at Flinders Street Station since it opened. When the old departure clocks were taken out in 1983, the public outcry had the decision reversed within a day. Arrange to meet there as if it were a first date, then wander off for lunch.
Improve the place you share
If the modern gift of improved real estate sounds a bit grand, think smaller: the veranda you’ve talked about since the kids left, a new front door, or a proper vegie bed by the kitchen window. Book the tradie and put the quote in the card.
Mother of pearl, the French way
Mother-of-pearl cufflinks, a shell-handled cheese knife or a small box inlaid with shell all suit the French noces de nacre. Antique centres and op shops are good hunting grounds for older pieces with a bit of character.
A clock for another couple
For parents or friends, Hallmark’s pick is a clock from an art museum’s online shop. A well-designed clock from a gallery shop is a present that gets hung on the wall, not put away in a cupboard.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate forty-two years together
A genuine rose preserved and finished in 24 karat gold over 60 steps and many months, then polished by hand. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first forty-two years together.
- Includes a certificate of authenticity
- Presented in a luxurious display case, inside a gloss white gift box bearing our debossed gold leaf logo
- A timeless symbol of love, preserved to keep forever
- Rose approximately 29 cm long; display case 34 cm long
What the 42nd means
Why clocks and watches
for forty-two years?
Clocks and watches are the usual gifts for a forty-second wedding anniversary. After this long together, time is the thing you’ve given each other most of, so a gift that keeps it makes good sense.
Why clocks and watches
Forty-two years of ticking
Most couples who reach forty-two years own a clock with a history: the one from the wedding, the one from a parent’s house, the one that has run five minutes fast for as long as anyone can remember. A new clock or watch says you’d happily sign up for the next lot of hours too.
The tall clock in the hallway got its nickname from a song. In 1876 the American songwriter Henry Clay Work published ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’, inspired by a longcase clock at the George Hotel in Piercebridge, England. The song was such a hit that ‘grandfather clock’ became the everyday name.
Where it began
Improved real estate, by the book
For most of the anniversary list’s history, the forty-second didn’t exist. A Michigan newspaper’s list of 1876 went straight from rubies at forty to the golden wedding at fifty, adding that after that ‘the aged couple are allowed to enjoy their many gifts in peace’.
In 1997, librarians at the Chicago Public Library’s information centre compiled a gift for every year from reference books such as the World Almanac and the World Book Encyclopedia. The years from forty-one to forty-nine got gifts like land, travel and books, and the forty-second got improved real estate. Hallmark’s list now gives clocks or watches.
Around the world
Mother of pearl, from France to Broome
In France the forty-second is the noces de nacre, the mother-of-pearl wedding. The German, Dutch, Italian and Japanese anniversary lists have no name for it at all, so the French have it largely to themselves.
Mother of pearl is the shimmering inner layer of a pearl oyster’s shell, and the same material pearls are made of. Australia has its own long history with it: Broome’s pearling industry began in the 1880s with oysters harvested for their shell, long before today’s cultured pearl farms.
42nd anniversary symbols
Clocks, jasper and your own flowers
Time, for the fourth time
Emily Post’s modern list gives clocks for the first anniversary and watches for the fifteenth, and the Chicago Public Library’s list gave timepieces for the thirty-first. Clocks and watches at forty-two make it the fourth time on the list that time itself is the gift.
None set, though Spain says jasper
No English-language list gives a stone for the 42nd, but Spanish lists call it the bodas de jaspe. Jasper is an opaque stone made mostly of fine-grained quartz, usually red, yellow, brown or green, and its old Greek name is said to mean ‘spotted or speckled stone’.
No set flower
No reliable list names a flower for the 42nd, which leaves you free to choose. Ask a florist to copy your wedding bouquet from an old photo, or pick whatever is flowering in the garden you’ve shared.
Celebrating the 42nd
Make a little time for the two of you
Have breakfast at the café you’ve always meant to try, take the grandchildren past the first place you rented and tell them what the rent was, or get out the wedding album and see who can name every guest. Forty-two years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Since the gift is time, make the day about it. Set an alarm for the hour you were married, stop whatever you’re doing when it goes off, and raise a glass, even if it’s only a cup of tea.
A short note can do the rest. Prop it against the kettle, where it’ll be found first thing.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 42nd means to others
Letters that capture forty-two years
After forty-two years, most of what you feel for each other goes without saying, which is exactly why it’s worth saying now and then. A letter takes an afternoon at most and gets reread for years. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year forty-two.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Graham,
Forty-two years ago you turned up to our wedding with your watch still on Perth time, and spent the reception wondering why everything was happening so early. You have been cheerfully out of step with the clock ever since.
This year you retired, took up sourdough, and turned the spare room into something you call a workshop and I call a mess. You also drove to Dubbo and back in a day when Kirsty’s car broke down, and never mentioned it again.
I’ve bought you a new watch. It is set to the right time. Please leave it that way.
Happy anniversary. I’d still pick you, early or late.
All my love,
Margaret
Dear Ros,
When we bought this house, you said the back step wouldn’t last the winter. It lasted another thirty-eight, mostly out of stubbornness, and last month I finally replaced it. I’m told the modern gift for forty-two years is improved real estate, so happy anniversary: you’re standing on it.
You’re the one who remembers every birthday, knows where the Christmas decorations are, and sat with Dad every Sunday at the end. I don’t say thank you nearly enough. Thank you.
Lunch is booked for Saturday, and the grandkids have been told they’re not invited.
Love,
Phil
To us,
Forty-two years ago your mother cried through the vows, my father slept through the speeches, and the band played ‘Hey Jude’ twice because it only knew six songs. We thought it was a disaster. It was perfect.
Since then: three kids, two mortgages, one caravan, and more grandchildren than will fit around the table at Christmas. We’ve argued about money, politics and whether a caravan counts as a holiday. It does.
Here’s to whatever time we’ve got next. Let’s not waste any of it waiting for the right moment.
Love,
Us
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the forty-two-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
In 1931 a New York Supreme Court justice, Joseph Morschauser, was hearing a separation case when he suddenly remembered it was his forty-second wedding anniversary. He called a short recess to ‘avoid trouble in my own household’, telephoned his wife, then rang a florist and ordered her a bunch of 42 roses. The report finishes with his rules for a happy marriage, which still hold up.
Mark Earnhart spotted Jeanine in the corridors of their Californian high school in 1968, and had decided she was the one before she even knew who he was. Forty-two years later, after a separation they mended through long evening talks, the pair wrote a book about making a marriage work. Their advice is practical: leave each other notes, split the chores by who likes doing what, and never ignore the little things.
This plain web page, put together by librarians at the Chicago Public Library in 1997, is one of the few lists to give a gift for every year up to the hundredth. Alongside improved real estate for the 42nd, you’ll find groceries for the 44th, optical goods such as a telescope for the 48th, and a 10-carat diamond for the 100th. Their sources are listed at the bottom.
42nd anniversary FAQ
