birthday traditions

Sliding into the new year?

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I am Canadian. I say this proudly even despite what I am about to tell you. Apparently, a tradition attributed to Canadians is buttering the nose of the birthday boy or girl.
This never happened to me. Nor to any of my friends (unless they were too embarrassed to ever mention it). Yet, if it’s on the Internet it must be true, right?


Mental Floss traces it to Canada in their fun birthday traditions video. The Revivalist recalls his own birthday greasings in the past and credits the tradition back to the Scots.
A Wheel and Distaff blog about the buttering garners comments from people across the United States who have experienced this tradition too.
A blogger on “Intangible Cultural Heritage, Folklore, and Oral History” talking about the tradition quotes a private blog with an American writer stating, “As the story goes, the butter is meant to help you slide into your new year!”

I love the idea of sliding into my new year, but I can think of many things I’d rather use:
icing (not buttercream…I hate buttercream)
ice cream
peanut butter
caramel
chocolate pudding
crème brulee
chocolate mousse…
Hmm. Mine would be a sticky start to the year.

Canadian or no, I’d love to hear if you have experience with this tradition. Some day, when I eventually write my book on birthdays, I can add more to the conversation around this greasy idea.

Ear yanking fun!

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If your ear gets tugged on your birthday, you might guess the tugger is Brazilian or maybe Hungarian. You’ll be able to tell the difference by whether or not they are also singing a rhyming song. Plus, once they start singing you might be able to guess the difference between Portuguese and Hungarian. Want a translation of the rhyme, though? Mental Floss tells us it means: “God bless you. May you live so long your ears reach your ankles.” American abroad Phil Done, who had his own ear pulled while teaching in Budapest in 2013, backs this up in his blog.

In another site’s list of top 10 odd birthday gestures, there’s even this creepy photo to illustrate the tradition: hungary-pulling-earlobes

 

Having already endured a toddler yanking on my earrings, I recommend choosing your birthday accessories carefully while in Hungary or Brazil.

Let them eat bread with sprinkles?

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Fairy bread for your birthday sounds cool, right? It might even be worth the crazy long flight to Australia or New Zealand to celebrate my special day there. Only, it sounds a lot better than I think it would taste.

According to Mental Floss, there’s a tradition on birthdays of eating white bread spead with butter and topped with sprinkles. This is called Fairy Bread (and, by the by, the sprinkles are called hundreds or thousands.

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Not sure how you’d make such a thing (because I know spreading butter and sprinkling something on top sounds tough)? Don’t worry: Here’s a recipe – yeah, it has only one instruction!

To make it more challenging, you might try out some of these fairy bread-inspired recipes.

The fairy bread wands look just like candy-covered pretzels sold in chocolate shops here. So, you could probably just visit Rocky Mountain Candy Co or the like if this is still too daunting a baking task.

For those, on the other hand, who want to take it up a notch there’s always baking a cake to look like Fairy Bread as this sugar-amped Sydney-based baker did.

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

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!