Author: Jenn Goddu

Jenn Goddu http://www.birthdayarebest.com I am a writer, editor, and writing coach who also blogs about birthdays!

Another Reason Not to Visit the Dark Ages

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When we imagine time travel — because all of us do — few of us decide the Dark Ages would be a great time to visit. Monty Python make it look funny in The Holy Grail, but funny from the outside watching from the comfort of our couches. We don’t actually want to live there.

There’s reference in Genesis to Pharoah celebrating a birthday. The Ancient Egyptians set aside money for garlands and animals to sacrifice to mark births. Rich Greeks celebrated the birth of a child, the child’s coming of age, and then marked an individual’s death with festivities on the anniversary of the person’s death. Plus, I already mentioned in a previous post, Caligula going a little crazy over his daughter’s first birthday. Julius Caesar also further pissed people off when he decided his birthday was a holiday fit for the gods (Oh, Caesar…when will you learn?).

But, then came the Dark Ages and the Christian Church decided celebrating one’s self was pagan. So, for about 1500 years people didn’t have birthdays. In fact, most people wouldn’t even have known when their birth date was. Lewis (1976) tells us it wasn’t until the 16th century that parish priests started recording birth dates.

So, along with your ideas of pestilence, illiteracy, disease-riddled hovels (if you were lucky), and other Dark Ages treats, add the absence of a birthday. I’d say a day without birthday candles is truly dark indeed.

Do your gifts ward off evil?

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Gift giving on birthdays dates all the way back to when people believed that good and evil fairies had power over people’s fate. That was about last Thursday, right?

According to Happy Birthdays Round the World, there used to be a belief that the date of someone’s birth was fraught with danger as it was a day of change which would make someone all the more susceptible to fairy misdeeds.

To fend off this threat, people would invite family and friends to come and protect the birthday person. Good fate was further guaranteed by giving gifts. In fact, Johnson (1963) tells us, the earlier the gifts and good tidings were offered the better chances the birthday person had of getting through the day of change safely.

Perhaps this is why, even today in Mexico, the birthday starts out with a rendition of Las Mañanitas.

I’ll tell you one thing — I would not be too thrilled to wake up to a mariachi band. A big part of birthday joy for me is the opportunity to sleep-in. I’ll take the help warding off evil fairies though…gifts welcome!

Image from buddhascrystalot00ozak

Image from buddhascrystalot00ozak

Child’s Birthday a Big Deal?

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I was so excited for my son’s first party. We invited his play group baby friends to Monkey Joe’s. I made Monkey faced cupcakes. I bought baby friendly monkey-themed gift bags. But, on the day of the party, every one of his guests was sick or had a sick parent.

Yes, my baby’s first birthday was a Charlie Brown party.

Fortunately, he was too young to know the difference. Plus, he still liked the cupcakes!

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Since then, I’ve invited more people to his parties to be sure that someone comes to celebrate with him. But, even at my craziest height of birthday party planning, I’ve never gone as far as Caligula.

According to Lewis (1976) in her informative book on Birthdays, Caligula marked the first birthday of his daughter Drusilla with two days of festivities. (Maybe he was making up for naming her Drusilla?). The celebrations included horse racing and, of course, the ritual slaughter of 300 bears and 500 Libyan beasts in an amphitheater.

So, whenever someone says you’re making too big a deal of a child’s birthday, remember Caligula. Unless you’ve got some ritual slaughter planned (and I don’t mean BBQ) you’re doing OK — comparatively.

 

 

Donating a Birthday

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When I go to lunch at my son’s school one of the typical topics of conversation is birthday parties. Who is having one. Who will be invited. Where the party will be held. What awesome presents the excited child can expect. This conversation happens even when no one at the table has a birthday party for another six months!

Yet there are kids who do not have a home at which to celebrate a birthday. It’s not that their families don’t want to give the child a special day — they can’t.

That’s where a well-intentioned organization such as Birthday Blessings comes in. According to their site, their goal “is to bring joy, recognition and support to homeless children and families during difficult times in their lives.” Birthday Blessings is local to Charlotte where I live. A student in one of my classes researching a non-profit introduced me to the organization. Then, my son’s school hosted a Birthday Blessings party, too. What a joy it is to help homeless children celebrate and feel special!

Another organization with a similar goal that I recently encountered is Celebration Cakes Ministry in Kentucky which bakes birthday cakes for children referred by social workers and other agencies.

Is there a birthday-themed organization where you live? I’d love to learn about more of these great ideas!

Profile photos by: D Sharon Pruitt of http://www.pinksherbet.com

Photo by: D Sharon Pruitt of http://www.pinksherbet.com

Sharing Your Birthday?

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When pregnant with my son, I was told his predicted due date was February 10. Then, people told me that first children were typically late. I worried (because what pregnant woman doesn’t need more to worry about?) he’d be born on Valentine’s Day. How awful for a boy to have to share his birthday with Valentine’s Day. He’d never be able to go out for a birthday dinner without joining the hordes of romancing couples eating prix fixe dinners. He’d be barraged by pink hearts. He’d be dating someone on his birthday and have to worry about his date’s gift instead of simply anticipating the loot he was getting for his birthday.

I told my son about this fear recently. He said it was good he wasn’t born on Valentine’s Day because it is a holiday “for girls.” Six can be so smart, right?

My husband is a Dec. 30 birthday. That’s another birthday that sucks in my mind. He’s always had to share his special day with Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It’s challenging to host a party for his birthday as every one is already getting primed for the 31st and can’t afford babysitters or travel two days in a row. So, it needs to be a combo event. How does one not get upstaged by J Lo in a unitard on national television? Of course, my husband would tell himself she was dancing for him alone.

What I wonder, though, is: Are there advantages to having a birthday on or near a holiday? What about sharing your birthday with another family member? What’s that like? Am I really just selfish or does sharing your birthday suck as much as I think it might? Please fill me in below!

Because growing a kid isn’t hard enough?

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Reading about birthday traditions around the world I came across one that really gets me: Planting a tree at the birth of the child.

What an idea…Help the ozone! Add to the tree canopy! The child will have a tree of his or her own to care about, perhaps inculcating a love of nature along the way. All of these things came to mind, and I thought “what a great idea!”

Photo courtesy of Helene & Kev https://www.flickr.com/photos/93081182@N02/

Photo courtesy of Helene & Kev
https://www.flickr.com/photos/93081182@N02/

Then, I read about the superstition that the fate of the tree foretells the fate of the child. So, if say a little Swiss girl’s pear tree fails to thrive, it’s a bad omen for the girl. For boys in Switzerland their fate relies on an apple tree. Germany, apparently, is another country where this is a common tradition.

I have enough trouble with house plants!

With this tradition I’d be having to tend to a fledgling tree while raising an infant and trying to keep him or her alive too! The first year with a newborn was difficult enough. Adding a tree to the list of to-do’s is just too much.

Sending your hopes skyward by flame.

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Photo courtesy of kiwimorado.blogspot.com/ via flickr

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!

Who else remembers “Paddy Whacks?”

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I was reminded the other day of an odd thing that my grade one teacher did on her students’ birthdays. We brought cupcakes in to share with the class. Next, though, we had to brush our teeth. The birthday child would return to class to swallow a colored tablet showing how well she’d done  getting rid of the food particles.

I must be remembering this wrong, conflating two memories. Yet, I remember being excited to take the blue tablet and test my brushing skills. Thinking of my first grader today, I can imagine he too would be happy to brush his teeth and then either a) have done a great job or b) be able to gross out anyone nearby with the blue spots on his teeth.

Courtesy of Tommy Klumker via flickr http://ow.ly/BzfYL

Courtesy of Tommy Klumker via flickr http://ow.ly/BzfYL

Another thing I remember from the playground is getting the Paddy Whacks. Your classmates would all line up in a row and you would crawl between their legs as they each got a chance to spank you. You tried to go as fast as possible through the line-up hoping to avoid the slaps and (if you’d dressed up for your special day) to not ruin your nice clothes crawling on the ground.

Turns out I’m not the only person who was subjected to spanks for birthdays. There’s a longstanding tradition in some cultures of getting a slap for each year of age plus, plus “one to grow on; one to live on; one to eat on; one to be happy on; one to get married on” (Johnson, 1963, p. 14).

The reason we do this? To get the body softened up for burial! Just what you want to be preparing for on your birthday!

Birthday tracking?

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I’ve encountered a birthday-related idea that I can’t get behind. Sorry. It’s an online database of people’s birthdays. BirthDatabase.com wants to let you enter the first and last name of a friend, co-worker, or relative, as well as their approximate age, and find out on what day their birthday falls.

I’m not against someone wanting to celebrate me — uhm, I mean with me — but couldn’t they just ask me when my birthday is? The idea of someone going online to track public records to find out my birthday is creepy to me.

flickr/robjewitt

flickr/robjewitt

Fortunately, the database didn’t find me. Zero public records found. I’ll worry about what that means on another day. No need to get all existential about it, right?

Data, Schmata. Where’s my cake?

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I have discovered that my 42 birthday candles this year will produce 42 BTUs or 10,584 calories of heat. Paul Sadowski’s Birthday Calculator then tells me I “can boil 4.80 US ounces of water with that many candles.” Since I can be sure to be enjoying a Chai Latte on my birthday, I can predict right now it will not be heated using my birthday candles. I’m more of a 16-ounce chai drinker. Plus, it’s my birthday. Why am I trying to boil water over candles?

Let’s just eat the cake!

 

The calculator, though, has a lot of neat details. I learned my ruling planet (Venus), celebrities who share my birthday (Elizabeth Shue!), and that I was born on a Friday to be a rat according to the Chinese Zodiac. That and Marigold is my birth flower.

Courtesy of burpee.com

(Photo courtesy of burpee.com)

Oh, and the top songs of that year included one I’ve always liked when performed by the Holly Cole Trio. But, while looking for that video, I found a cool one by a performer that leaves me amazed every time. Enjoy Bobby McFerrin using only his voice and body, plus his audience, to perform the song.