by Grayling Holmes

Graduation commencement ceremonies will be taking place in St. Louis and beyond during the month of May. High school and college students who have labored for years will soon walk across the stage of various and sundry schools of higher learning, either in indoor auditoriums or platforms erected outdoors for the time-honored rituals. Diplomas and degrees will be handed them to certify their achievement.

Young ladies and gents will be donning mortar boards, and gowns will stand ready to toss their tassels to from right to left to the right to signify graduating. Then a sea of black caps will fly through the air signifying the ceremony has ended.

A bit of trivia — where did the throwing of graduation caps originate?

According to Google, tossing the graduation cap in the air was started by the U.S. Naval Academy in 1912. The graduates would spend two years as midshipmen and had to always wear a designated hat. Once the graduation ended, the midshipman would become officers and would no longer need their old hats.

One of the most joyful of traditions is that of gift giving for graduation. Gifts are more than gifts at commencement ceremonies, rather symbols of love, joy, and pride in the graduate upon which the gifts are bestowed. They are a celebration not just of the graduate and their accomplishments, but of their relationship that you have with them and the journey it took them to get there. “Here is a token of my esteem for you and a tangible symbol of the value that I put in your education and your future,” a gift might say.

Following are some graduation gift-giving ideas from Hearth & Soul that show you value a student who has put their heart and soul into their educational endeavors.

For more graduation gift-giving ideas go to the Gifts for Graduates tab on the Hearth & Soul website.