Birthday Parties

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

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!