The Anonymous GiftDay Story

A woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, wished to purchase a GiftDay 50th birthday present for her husband, a famous and wealthy individual. She told us that she wanted a GiftDay item that she could put on the wall of their newly purchased vacation home. It was late January 2008 and the gift recipient was turning 50 soon. There wasn’t much time.

Our White Glove Services utilizes a resource called Newspaper Archive. The website is the world’s largest online newspaper archive and contains billions (yes, billions) of articles. Our premium service routinely checks whether a gift recipient was born on a date in a place where something interesting or historic occurred. 

For those who don’t know what an aurora borealis is, let us explain: Earth acts as an enormous magnet when it pulls particles from the sun. When these high-speed particles strike a layer of nitrogen and oxygen above earth, the particles cause the gases to glow - what we see are the Northern Lights. Typically, the particles are pulled toward earth’s magnetic poles. As such, the aurora borealis are typically seen above the arctic circle.

So strange and rare was its appearance in Southern California that the L.A. Times reported the story on its front-page. Because so few people knew what an aurora was, there were mass reports of fire in the mountains situated around Los Angeles.  Only when a local fire department sent up a plane were authorities able to determine that there wasn’t a fire.

The Northern Lights glittered in the sky long before man existed. Thousand year-old legends tell stories about them. The central Asian Chuvah people identified the lights as their goddess Suratan-tura (“birth-giving heaven”). According to the legend, the sky gave birth to a child when the lights “rolled and writhed”. The goddess was called upon to ease women through childbirth.

GiftDay contacted well-known aurora “chaser” and photographer Patrick Endres in Alaska and obtained through his website an absolutely gorgeous photo of the type of aurora that occurred on the birthdate of our GiftDay recipient. We included a plaque under the photo that referenced the Chuvah legend as well as the fact that the recipient’s birthdate was a poetic moment  “of light and magic”.

GiftDay endeavors to help everyone find special meaning in gifts through time - so that the gifts can be used to tell the gift recipient that they are as unique and special as... an aurora borealis!.