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I know a lot of people didn’t expect our relationship to last—but we’ve just celebrated our two months’ anniversary.
—BRITT EKLAND
With the availability of attractive greeting cards today, few people send personal anniversary or birthday notes and letters. However, anyone who has received a commercial card with only a signature knows how much pleasure could have been added with a handwritten line or two. For most people, finding a letter enclosed in the card is as good as receiving a gift.
Anniversaries once referred primarily to wedding anniversaries. Today, people celebrate business, service, personal, and other anniversaries and they appreciate being remembered on their special day.
Some businesses send birthday and anniversary cards to their customers as a goodwill gesture.
• anniversary of a death
• birthday
• business goodwill (see GOODWILL)
• business or business association anniversary
• customers’ birthdays or anniversaries (see SALES)
• invitations to birthday or anniversary celebrations (see INVITATIONS)
• personal achievement or service anniversary
• wedding anniversary (spouse, parents, family members, friends)
• Mention the occasion (if you don’t know the number of years, refer to “your service anniversary,” “your birthday,” or “the anniversary of Beryl’s death”).
• Include, whenever possible, an anecdote, a shared memory, good-hearted humor, or a sentence telling why the person is important to you.
• End with good wishes for another anniversary period or for the coming years and with assurances of your affection, love, admiration, warmth, interest, delight, pleasure, continued business support, or other appropriate sentiment.
• Don’t detract from your greetings by including other information or news; remain focused on the anniversary or birthday. The exception is the newsy letter to a family member or close friend.
• Don’t include “joking” references to advancing age, incapacity, passing years, the difficulties of married life, becoming a fixture at the office. Clever cracks about age and marriage and length of service may evoke reluctant smiles, but they carry little warmth. Avoid negative greeting cards that assume all 21-year-olds can hardly wait to get to a bar, that “the big 4-0” is depressing, and that 50-year-olds are over the hill.
• Birthday or anniversary greetings can be personalized with a quotation: “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” (Madeleine L’Engle) “The fact was I didn’t want to look my age, but I didn’t want to act the age I wanted to look either. I also wanted to grow old enough to understand that sentence.” (Erma Bombeck) “The marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes that he or she got the best of it.” (Sydney J. Harris)
• Keep a supply of greeting cards on hand. At the beginning of the year, note dates to remember on the calendar or in a computer file (the gathering of dates is time-consuming only the first time you do it). On the first of each month, choose and address cards to all those celebrating that month. On the upper right-hand corner of the envelope (which will later be covered by a stamp) pencil in the date of the birthday or anniversary—and mail each one a few days before the date.
• Collect small, flat, useful gifts that can be inserted in a greeting card: handkerchiefs, bookmarks, postage stamps, lottery tickets, art postcards, dollar bills. You can also plump up a birthday or anniversary card with photographs, newspaper clippings, and recipes.
• A number of Internet sites allow you to choose and personalize greeting cards to be sent by e-mail.
• Keep track of service anniversaries in your company; sending a note to mark the date creates company loyalty, especially if you add a complimentary remark about the person’s work. In the case of colleagues, personalize the note with a recalled shared experience. Goodwill is also built when you remember the anniversary of your relationship with important suppliers or customers.
• Birthday and anniversary goodwill cards are sometimes sent to individual customers. In businesses where you have access to customers’ birthdates or anniversary dates (insurance, for example) sending cards is a way of keeping in touch with people while also reminding them of you and your products or services.
• In her book The Bestseller , Olivia Goldsmith points out, tongue-in-cheek, that it is considered bad form to wish authors on their birthdays “many happy returns” since to a writer “returns” are unsold books returned to the publisher.
• Congratulations are appreciated on the anniversary of a significant personal achievement—abstaining from smoking or drinking, for example—but only between people who know each other well.
• Write close friends and relatives who have lost someone on the anniversary of the death. Don’t worry about “bringing up sad memories.” In one of her columns Ann Landers wrote, “I was among those who had the mistaken notion that it was painful for family members to hear references to a loved one who had died. Many readers called me on it, and I know better now.” The person is well aware of the date, and will be grateful that others remember. When someone close to you has lost a spouse after many years of marriage, you might want to send the survivor a special note on the couple’s wedding anniversary.
• For business, sales-oriented, or official letters, send typed or handwritten messages on letterhead or personal-business stationery.
• Commercial greeting cards are appropriate for nonbusiness uses, as long as you add a handwritten note.
• E-mailed birthday and anniversary wishes are also received happily.
• Many newspapers have columns where family and friends can publish birthday or anniversary congratulations (usually for a fee). Often this is done in conjunction with an open house or reception to celebrate the anniversary.
WORDS
PHRASES
SENTENCES
Congratulations on forty years of outstanding contributions to Heaslop-Moore Plastics.
Congratulations on the tenth anniversary of Stanley Graff Real Estate—it has been a pleasure serving all your stationery needs!
Every good wish to both of you for much health, happiness, prosperity, and many more years of togetherness.
Here’s a question for you from Ruth Gordon: “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”
May you enjoy many more anniversaries—each happier than the last.
May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live!
May you live long and prosper!
On the occasion of your 25th wedding anniversary, we send you our best wishes for continued love and happiness together.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of Archie’s death, and I wanted you to know that we still miss him and that you are in our thoughts today.
PARAGRAPHS
Best wishes for a happy anniversary to a couple we have long admired and loved. May your relationship continue to be a blessing to both of you as well as to all those who know you.
This marks the tenth anniversary of our productive and happy business association. In that time, we have come to appreciate Fausto Babel Inc.’s prompt service, reliable products, and knowledgeable staff. I’m sure the next ten years will be equally happy and successful. Congratulations to all of you.
Happy 1st Anniversary! I have such lovely memories of your wedding day. I hope you have been gathering more happy memories of your first year of married life.
Barbara and Dick Siddal celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on February 14. They have four children, nine grandchildren, and many wonderful friends. Love and congratulations from the whole family.
Sunday is the first anniversary of Vivie’s death, and I couldn’t let the day go by without writing to see how you are getting along and to tell you that all Vivie’s friends here in Cambridge miss her very much.
SAMPLE LETTERS
Dear Muriel Joy,
Happy birthday! I’m sending you 6 quarters, 6 colored bows for your hair, 6 teddy-bear stickers, and 6 tiny horses for your collection.
How old did you say you are today?
Love,
Aunt Dinah
——
Dear Dr. Arnold,
On behalf of the governing board, I would like to congratulate you on ten years of outstanding service as headmaster. Under your leadership the school has established itself among the premier ranks of such institutions.
Be assured of our continued admiration and support.
Very sincerely yours,
——
Dear Winnie and Ed,
Congratulations to you both on the fifteenth anniversary of Leitner’s Heating & Plumbing. As you know by now, you’re our best (our only!) supplier, and the reason is simple: you’re a class act. Quality and competence have paid off for you, and nobody could be happier for you than I. Best wishes with the next fifteen years.
Yours truly,
——
Dear Auntie Em,
I send you love and hugs on your 80th birthday. If only I were there to celebrate with you!
I read this once: “Years in themselves mean nothing. How we live them means everything.” (Elisabeth Marbury) I hope I live my years as well as you’ve lived yours!
Speaking of which, how is the bridge group? the golf foursome? the church cleaning crew? your birthday luncheon friends? your bowling game? your Monday night dinners with the family? And are you still going to Las Vegas in February?
(Watch the mail for a small package from me!)
Love,
D.
——
Dear Rabbi Wassermann,
On behalf of the members and officers of the Adath Women’s League, I send you best wishes for a joyous birthday and a happy, healthy year!
Karen Engelschall
President
Adath Women’s League
——
Dear Martin,
All of us here at Eden Land Corporation congratulate you at Chuzzlewit Ltd. on your twenty years of solid contributions in the field of architecture.
We know that when we do business with you we can count on superior designs, reasonable costs, and dependable delivery dates.
May the success of these first twenty years lead to an even more successful second twenty.
With best wishes,
——
Dear Penrod,
Congratulations on your twelfth birthday. I hope you have a wonderful time and get everything you want (although, from what your father tells me, I hope you don’t want another slingshot).
Your uncle and I are sorry we can’t be there to celebrate with you, but I’m sending you a little something in a separate package. Have a good time and give everyone a hug for us.
Happy birthday!
——
Dear Grandma Annie,
I know you and Grandpa Oliver would have been married 65 years today, and that you still miss him. I love my photograph of the two of you taken at your 60th wedding anniversary party. I think about him—and about you—a lot.
I hope this day isn’t too sad for you. Fortunately you have a lot of happy memories. Maybe they’ll be some comfort.
Just thinking about you...
Love from
Monica
——
See also: ANNOUNCEMENTS, BELATED, CONGRATULATIONS, FAMILY, GOODWILL, INVITATIONS, THANK YOU