fThe poet who claimed that April is the cruelest month got it wrong. It’s really January, that long cold stretch when holiday fun is over and the gray days last an eternity. Or maybe it just seems so this season, with recent events conspiring to make us feel like it’s the end of the world.
Why is the dead of winter a good time to start a new year, anyway? In the medieval era, much of Europe thought March 25th was the right date; the Jewish calendar still begins in the fall. And then there is that nutty but fascinating French revolutionary calendar that kept the twelve months, but divided each into three ten-day weeks.
Would the inexorable march of birthstones be any different if our calendar was different? Who knows? In jewelry, as in so many things in life, we are supposed to dance with the ones that brung us. But must we? What if you don’t like the birthstone you are stuck with? (Have I mentioned lately how much I have always hated peridot, the wishy washy green—not Brat!—that, as an August baby, I am saddled with?)
In any case, this birthstone business allegedly has deep roots, going back to biblical times when Aaron’s breastplate sported 12 colored gems. Well, maybe. We do know that in 1912, the National Association of Jewelers met in Kansas to standardize birthstones, and officially adopted a list, which was subsequently updated and expanded in 1952. (These guys were not historians. Their goal was to sell more jewelry.)
With 2025 spread out before us, we have decided to train our gimlet eye on birthstone jewelry with the strong caveat—actually an order!–that you disobey this edict and embrace whatever bauble suits your fantasy. Though we have organized these treats in the conventional manner, we say—get that turquoise Victorian bird even if you were not born in December! Grab that incredible diamond Bernard James floral pendant, and who cares if your actual birthday argues for opals! Rules, and sometimes unjust laws, were made to be broken.
