Ep27: On Birthday Celebrations

Today's episode is on birthday celebrations: on how I celebrate my birthday and how others do not like to celebrate their birthdays; on how birthday celebrations came to exist; and on how birthdays are not celebrated in certain cultures and countries! So whether you celebrate your birthday or you don't, this episode has a bit of everything for you!

Episode Transcript

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Hello there and welcome to Casual Fridays by I Read Aloud, the podcast that discusses

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various themes from a personalized lens so that you always end up with my unwarranted
advice and my own take on matters.
I am your host Dada and I do urge you to look me up on YouTube, just search for as I read
aloud and you will enter my world of storytelling with the click of a button.

(00:30):
I just want to remind you before I begin this episode that this podcast airs Fridays on
the following platforms, YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Google, iHeartRadio, Spotify and RSS.
Today's episode is on birthday celebrations and I will start by telling you how I celebrate

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my birthday. I move on then to talk about why some people do not like to celebrate their
birthdays. Then I'll move on to a brief history on how birthdays came to exist and I end with
some traditions from around the world that include certain countries that don't celebrate
individual birthdays. So I hope you stick to the end and let's begin.

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Now I am a June baby and so I'm a summer child and so because my birthday is in the beginning
of summer and everyone wants to party you know when summer begins and still not that
hot. So really I end up celebrating almost the whole of the month with a plethora of

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people, different friends from different groups and different family members. I usually celebrate
the day of my birthday with my family because it's tradition for us to you know cut the
cake together and have a quiet dinner at home. Sometimes we go out but generally we do it
like a home affair and a family affair. But you know the days before, the days after you

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know I have different outings, lunches here, dinners there. I'm always invited of course
because I'm the birthday girl. I always get gifts of course because I'm the birthday girl
and I love the month of June. It's you know I look forward to it. It's even more fun than
Christmas time I'm telling you. So because I love celebrating my birthday so much it

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came as a shock to me to discover at one point in my life in my 20s that there were some
people who did not like to celebrate their birthdays and started actually when I met
a young lady who was my student at university and who then became one of my closest friends
until today. And she did not like to celebrate her birthday and you know I was a bit you

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know worried at first. I was her friend. How could I not acknowledge this day for her?
I mean I could not have passed without me doing something special for her but she didn't
like to celebrate her birthday. So I kind of found a way to make her day special without
imposing a celebration on her. So what I used to do was take her out on one of our usual

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outings like a dinner or a dinner and a movie and of course I would pay the bill because
it's her birthday and at some point I just like slide a small gift across the table and
at the end of the dinner I would you know order the restaurant dessert and take a small
candle out of my purse and light it up quickly without anyone you know noticing or without

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any fanfare and ask her to make a wish and blow out the candle. And it actually worked
but my friend is not the only one who doesn't like to celebrate her birthday. There are
many people out there who don't like to do that and there are many reasons for it. Some
people have social anxiety and feel embarrassed to receive gifts or even receive any special

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attention in public in general. Some others like to be in control of things and might
be anxious that their party might not be a success so they would rather not have it at
all. Some people don't like surprises in general and because of their social anxiety they prefer
you know to play things on the down low and still some others suffer from depression around

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the time of their birthday. It is known as the birthday blues because their birthday
reminds them of some unhappy memory or situation maybe a lack of accomplishment in some area
of their lives or maybe even a reminder of their aging. I mean there is definitely a
lot of social pressure and expectation on having to achieve certain milestones in a

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specific order by certain ages or a certain time frame such as you have to finish school
by the age of 18 then you have to go into college and get a college degree three four
years thereafter unless you're doing like medical school and that's you know to your
late 20s then you have to get married by the age of 30 for example and have children by

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35 and birthdays could remind people of their age and lack of certain achievements and that
could be daunting and depressing really. And of course this won't be my podcast if there
is no side note and no digression from my topic slightly but I have to say that social
pressure and social expectation can only affect you if you let them. My advice to you is to

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live your life at your own pace and remember so many people started their businesses after
the age of 50 and many people became famous or millionaires after the age of 50 and these
days with all you know scientific advancements even childbirth is not possible until the
age of 50 or even a bit more and there are a few exceptions too of childbirth at the

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age of 60 or so. We each have our own unique life path and sometimes not conforming to
society and expectations can be the best thing to happen to you. So again my advice to you
is to look at your own desires and your own feelings and your own expectations and stop

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stop comparing yourself to others and believe me if you look closely at the lives of people
you look up to or you feel are better than you or whatever and you think they have at
all these people sometimes you have to compare yourself to may actually are be miserable,
unhappy might even you know be fighting their own demons because sometimes living and achieving

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by social standards may seem all glittery on the outside but it is in fact mostly pain
and satisfaction on the inside because to achieve all that between quotations all that
people have to ignore what makes them happy and what makes them satisfied. Anyway back

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to my main topic I was talking about people who don't like celebrate their birthdays and
I want to say here that people's feelings should be respected and people should not
be forced into a party or a public celebration if they don't like it. This doesn't mean
that you don't celebrate the birthday at all or that you ignore the birthday altogether

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because this means that you don't care for the other person, that you don't hold them
high regard or high esteem or you don't remember them or remember their birthday. So what do
you do? You send them maybe a text message wishing them a happy birthday and then you
do something that they are amenable to. It could be something that they do every day

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that doesn't require any extra effort on their part such as going on a hike maybe with you,
for a walk with you, having a coffee with you, having dinner with you, whatever it is,
just something that they feel up to on their birthday and you can do that and not impose

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on them anything that is undesirable. In all cases I have to say here that the idea of
celebrating birthdays is a tradition that is not found all over the world. There are
certain religions for example that do not celebrate birthdays because it goes against
the doctrine, this religious doctrine that they believe in. And even in Christianity

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and Christians who celebrate Christmas, which is the hugest birthday if you want of the
year in Christianity, the early Christians and even some Christians today don't celebrate
individual birthdays because birthday celebrations began as a pagan tradition. The pagans, if

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you don't know what a pagan is, a pagan is someone who would worship a statue and that
was the idea before Christianity came into being, before the celestial religion came
into being, people used to worship a statue that would represent for example the sun god
or the love god or the rain god or whatever. And so the pagans used to believe that a birthday

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is a major change in someone's life and so an evil spirit could possess that someone
on their birthday because of that huge transformation in the life of that person. And so the idea
of the birthday celebration was actually a ritual to ward off evil spirits. And aside

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from that, the first recorded birthday celebration was in ancient Egypt. The pharaoh was seen
as a god and so when the pharaoh, when the person, you know, that will become a pharaoh,
became a pharaoh, it would mean that they are birthed as a god, they are no longer human.

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And so the celebration that used to happen, you know, what would be a birthday celebration
in that case, was celebration of a human that became birthed into divinity, if you will.
And it was the Greeks who brought in the tradition of lighting candles on a birthday cake because

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the Greeks used to offer moon-shaped cakes to the goddess Artemis and they used to light
candles to make the cake seem as though it is glowing and therefore reflecting the beauty
of Artemis. So, so far in history, you know, and what I've said so far, birthdays were

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really reserved for gods and goddesses, apart from the pagan tradition. And it seems that
the Romans were the ones who started celebrating birthdays for non-religious figures and they
introduced the idea of presenting gifts as well. And despite the abhorrence of pagan

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traditions, Christians began celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in the form of Christmas
around the fourth century. And the reason was because they wanted to go up against the
Roman tradition of celebrating a day called, or like, I should say a few days called Saturnalia.

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Now Saturnalia was held around 17 December, it could go on to 19 December as well. And
so by creating the Christmas, you know, the birth of Jesus celebration on the 25th of
December, they kind of, you know, went up against the Roman traditions and, you know,

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celebrations so as to bring in Romans to Christianity. And believe it or not, the idea of blowing
out a candle to make a wish seems to have started in Germany around the 18th century.
When they used to have parties for children, that's what became a thing in Germany at the

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time, and they wanted, you know, the kids to do something fun, so they would have a
tradition of bringing a cake with candles and the children would have to blow out the
candles with a wish. Despite all these traditions that have come up, you know, for individual
birthdays, still not many cultures till today celebrate individual birthdays. In Bhutah,

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for example, individual birthdays are celebrated collectively on the 1st of January, so everyone
becomes a year older on the 1st of January. Also in Vietnam, everyone gets a year older
on the Vietnamese New Year known as Tet, and the date for Tet changes yearly. In Japan

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also and up till 1950 or so, you know, the whole population used to become a year older
by New Year, but by 1950s, you know, things changed a bit and celebrations today of birthdays
are individual celebrations. Some cultures accentuate certain ages, certain birthdays,

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you know, of an individual more than others. So in Chinese culture, for example, the most
celebrated birthdays are those of the age of 60 and 80, and they are seen as a major
milestone. And as for to it is numbers, and the large celebration is had, whereas for
the other birthdays, it's just a small celebration. And it's a similar idea to the quinceañera

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birthdays for 15 year old Mexican girls who, you know, celebrate their 15th birthday to
mark their entry into womanhood. So whether you celebrate your birthday or you don't,
I wish you a long and happy life in which you are true to yourself and listen to your
own voice and do your own thing and keep on crushing it. And that brings me to the end

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of today's episode. Next week's topic shall be on college degrees and they're important.
I hope you will tune in then. For now, I wish you a lovely weekend and I send you all my
love till next Friday.