My closest friends and I recently celebrated our friendiversary – the anniversary of the start of our friendship. As has become our custom we marked the occasion by going out for a meal, exchanging cards, and taking the opportunity to reflect upon and give thanks for our friendship.

I know what you’re probably thinking. I expect it’s largely the same as I would have thought if I’d read that opening paragraph a few years ago: ‘A friendiversary?! That sounds like a cringingly oversentimental idea or another money-making ploy by gift card companies.’ If, like me, you’re from the UK, you may feel that celebrating a friendiversary sounds very un-British and likely to be an import from somewhere west (let the reader understand).

Marking that day is one of the things that has helped us to be deliberate about remembering the good in the relationship, talking about it, and giving thanks for it.

I confess I took a bit of persuading. It wasn’t me who first acknowledged the date. These friends and I had just returned from our first holiday together – them, their kids, her sister, and me. We had been in Cornwall. Amazingly, they had remembered that it was exactly a year since the first time we had hung out as friends. They gave me a soft-toy Cornish pasty keyring as a gift to mark the occasion. Me being me, I was so enamoured with this gift – combining as it did two of my great loves: soft toys and Cornish pasties – that I totally missed the main part of the gift. Attached to the keyring was a key to their house. It was only later when I went to put the keyring in my bag, that I noticed the key and realised what was actually going on. It was a funny moment, and also a deeply moving one.

Ever since then, we have marked our friendiversary each year the date comes around. Doing so has been good for us. Our friendship has not been straightforward. But marking that day is one of the things that has helped us to be deliberate about remembering the good in the relationship, talking about it, and giving thanks for it.

So, I’ve changed my mind on celebrating friendiversaries. Yes, it’s a bit sentimental. Yes, it’s a bit unusual. Yes, it feels a bit un-British. But I think celebrating a friendiversary can be a great way to acknowledge the importance of friendship and to thank God for the wonderful gift it can be.

My friendship with this couple is probably unusual in that we know the exact date we first spent time together as friends. You may not know the specific dates when your significant friendships started, but you could choose a date to celebrate your friendship each year. Maybe there’s a date that is significant to you together for some reason, or maybe you could just pick a date at random. Or maybe for you, there’s a different way to be deliberate about celebrating and giving thanks for your friendship. Whatever it looks like for you, my encouragement is to make it a priority to celebrate one of God’s greatest gifts to us, the gift of friendship.