Giving a handkerchief as a gift
Giving a handkerchief as a gift means handing over something made for colds and tears. In Sweden, an old encyclopedia warned, a lover should not give his sweetheart a silk one, or she would wipe away her affection.
What it may mean
Most gifts are chosen for good days: a scarf for parties, a bottle for celebrating, a book for a holiday. A handkerchief is different. It is made for colds, for funerals, for the moment at a wedding when everyone cries, and so it carries a hint of the hard days to come. Old gift lore played on the wiping too: a Swedish suitor, for one, was warned that a silk handkerchief would let his sweetheart wipe her affection away. Yet there is also a modest kindness in a present intended for bad days. It says, without words, that you expect the other person to have sorrows and that you hope to be with them in a small way when they do. Some of the best gifts are useful exactly when nothing else is going right.
Depending on how you saw it
An embroidered one with initials
A handkerchief stitched with someone's initials used to be a common present, kept folded in a drawer for years and used only on special days. Which small object with your initials or name on it do you still own, and who gave it?
A blue handkerchief at a wedding
One family of Irish and English descent told a student that the "something blue" a bride carries could be a blue handkerchief, to hide the blue of tears, sad or happy. Which tears do you hope to cry this year?
A grandfather's pressed handkerchief
Many people remember an older relative who always had a clean, ironed handkerchief in a pocket, ready for a child's runny nose or a stranger's spilled coffee. Which old-fashioned habit of someone you loved would you like to keep up?
Why it happens in nature
Cloth handkerchiefs were everyday items until paper tissues took over in the twentieth century, while fine linen, silk or lace ones were long a common present. Because they are used for tears and illness, they sit close to sorrow in people's minds, and some old gift customs, such as a Swedish one about lovers, treat them with caution.
What folk beliefs say
Sweden
In Sweden it was considered unlucky for a lover to give his sweetheart a silk handkerchief, a 1903 collection says, since she would wipe away her affections for him.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 135. View the page
Irish and English family tradition
A family of Irish and English descent taught that the something blue a bride wears could be a blue handkerchief, to hide the blue of tears, sad or happy.
Source: Samantha Borchard (collector), Wedding Traditions (USC Digital Folklore Archive) (2019), folklore.usc.edu. View the page
To reflect on
What could you give someone that would be most useful on their worst day rather than their best?