Photo courtesy of kiwimorado.blogspot.com/ via flickr

We have some odd ideas for how to celebrate our birthdays.

At this point it’s pretty common to set ablaze candles pushed into the cake so we can make our wish while blowing our spit all over the cake! This is now such a familiar tradition, we can find candles that extinguish over and over causing the birthday person to turn red in the face with effort and/or embarrassment along with so many other bizarre wax ways of expressing personal flair.

Apparently we have Germans to thank for this age-old tradition. Happy Birthdays Round the World gives them credit for both starting birthday celebrations called kinderfeste (literally translated to children festival) and for being the ones who wanted lighted candles on cakes. They were adopting an old belief that lit candles helped carry prayers up to the gods. So, when you’re wishing on your cake you’re really hoping the flames (42 BTU in my case this year) will carry your hopes up to someone who can do something about them.

So, when you’ve been doing this birthday cake wishing, what’s the best one you’ve made and did it come true? Tell me below!