I’m 44 and I know the term, but I’d always vaguely thought they were a Victorian thing – I had no idea until right now that people still had them well into the second half of the twentieth century.
I have one. It was my great-grandmother’s and she gave it to my grandma when Grandma moved to Indiana after WWII to marry my grandpa. When Grandma had to go into a nursing home she asked if I wanted it so I took it. It’s a Lane, very nice and sturdy and weighs a ton. I use it to store my extra sheet sets.
I think I remember Lane trying to sell them at my school (I was in high school in the late 80s/early 90s). But I didn’t have one.
I’m not surprised it died out in most places. Even assuming that you do have the space for a hope chest, and you adapted it to the idea that those items are for when you first set up housekeeping (whether that’s because you’ve gone off to college or moved into your first apartment or whatever) not just for when you got married - the reason it made sense is that the things inside it were supposed to last. And we don’t really use objects like that anymore. Thrift shops are full of the furniture/dishes/linens that were full of the furniture that was to be passed down for generations that it turns out the generations didn’t want. There’s no reason to pre-buy a set of dishes when you can go to Target and pick them up when they’re actually needed.
We’re similar in age and I only know of them from my relatively recent interest in antiques.
I’m the same age, and the first I heard of one was when I was told that my cousin had hers stolen. Don’t remember any more about that.
When I took my Gap Year before starting college, I worked in an office with several other women around the same age, and one of them had someone knock on her door and offer to do a Hope Chest party. She invited me and a couple other people, and before I left, my parents told me not to buy anything because “those companies are a ripoff.” They were right - it was basically overpriced, low-quality cookware - and none of us bought anything but my co-worker did get a lovely parting gift in exchange for her time.
I’m 43. A lot of people my age are familiar with the concept because we read the Little House on the Prairie books in elementary school, back before they appeared on the most challenged books lists.
I don’t know anyone my age who had a hope chest for its intended purpose - though some of us have inherited one and others bought used ones to just store bedding in - but when I was a senior in high school Lane was still desperately trying to interest teenage girls in them. They gave us little cedar boxes and coupons for X off a full size chest. I doubt they sold a one.
This.
I went to high school in the 70s and i heard of hope chests, and maybe was even offered a small one by lane, but they felt antiquated, and i didn’t know anyone who had one.
I was gifted all that stuff when I married – linens and comforter and flatware and dishes. My husband and i married out of college, where we lived in dorms. So it was hugely helpful to have our entire extended community give us enough stuff that we could set up housekeeping. But i didn’t acquire any of it in advance.
My sister-in-law got one of those mini chests from Lane, but the younger one did not, so I guess they stopped doing it around 1990. At least in that area.
My first cookware was leftovers from my uncle’s apartment. He had moved back home and my parents got all the stuff he didn’t take back with him. Even now I have a few odds and ends that came from his kitchen or my grandmother’s kitchen, as she had duplicates which were cast offs from someone else’s kitchen.
Both my parents came from families where things were used forever. Buying things just to have something new, when there was something already available, would have been considered wasteful. So probably my parents also started off their married life with hand-me-downs.
I graduated high school in 82 in Los Angeles and I had never heard of women getting those little chests. I was until I read this thread only vaguely aware of what a hope chest was and would have thought it died out in the 1950s. According to the link below, Lane gave out 27 million of those boxes from 1925 to 2004.
It may have died out because of the shift of having quality wares to having the latest greatest kitchen gadgets. This sort of goes hand in hand with the undoing of traditions that we have seen and have replaces with consumerism.
Funny thing, the pictures of the miniature chests remind me of the cigar boxes I have from my grandfather, who got them in the 1950s.
Honestly, Hope Chests were not a tradition that was doing anyone any good. The whole idea was that your whole identity was wife and mother, and in that time in your life before you were married, the best thing you could do with your time was embroider sheets and pillowcases and table cloths to “make a home” for someone else. I’m super, super glad that these days I can buy a set of sheets and be done with it, and, frankly, if someone spills red wine on the tablecloth, I’m not going to be devastated because they ruined one of my life accomplishments.
And also of course there was an assumption that your husband ( who you probably hadn’t even met by the time you started filling your hope chest - high school junior/senior age would have been quite late to start) wouldn’t have any sort of preferences regarding blankets, dishware, sheets etc.
Right. You got to pick the silver pattern, he got to pick everything that really mattered. Which is why picking the silver pattern felt so important.
As a non-American, the only reference I’ve ever heard to Hope Chests came in Back to the Future, in the scene where Marty wakes up in his mother-as-teenager’s bedroom:
“Where are my pants?!”
“Over there on my” pauses, blushes, looks away “Hope Chest”
Clearly, an apt period detail and even without knowing anything else, I got the clear impression that Lorraine saw a future for her and “Calvin” beyond making out in parked cars.
I think this is also suggests that even in the mid-80s, Hope Chests were seen as something from a bygone era.
Good point!
I suspect it has more to do with its having become far more common for people to live outside their parents’ homes for some time before getting married.
If both the bride and groom have been living with their parents right up to the marriage, then unless they’ve made some previous preparation they’d be setting up housekeeping with only whatever they happen to get in wedding presents – which might easily leave out essentials. If they’ve been living on their own or with roommates, they probably already have at least enough bedding and so on to start off with.
I take it this is what over here is known as the “bottom drawer” ( not that anyone does that any more either).
My sister born in 1948 and I born in 1957 did not have hope chests. One of us had the small Lane cedar box which to this day I would love to have. What is the point of a hope chest these days? Most couples live together prior to marriage (if they even get married). Those that don’t live together have lived on their own. Are there still people who live with their parents til they get married?