September 19th – Birthday Celebrations

September is a busy birthday month for our family with both sons and my sister Elaine celebrating their auspicious arrivals on this planet.  In fact, today is Elaine’s birthday so Happy Birthday!

With all of these birthdays happening, I started wondering who and how these celebrations began.   As, usual I turned to Google for some possibly questionable answers to fill that little ‘piece of my mind’ that torments me when I get plagued by such all-consuming wonderings. 

Google hooked me up with Huffington Post and this is what their inquisitive minds had dug up on the subject.

Ancient Egyptians began the birthday celebrations in the 1300 BCs as an annual means of  honoring their Pharaohs.  

The Greeks added moon-shaped cakes, decorated with lit candles for a glowing effect. 🕯️🕯️🕯️ Awwww….

At some point, Ancient Romans started celebrating birthdays for the common man.   Christians found the practice rather pagan but eventually joined the party when they started celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in the forth century. It was not until the twelfth century that women were deemed worthy of such celebrations. 🥺

Finally, in the late eighteenth century, Germans created the birthday cake as we know it today and began decorating it with a specific number of candles to honor the age of the celebrant.

So there you have it! The thirty-one century origin of birthdays.

Take care and have a great day. (Even if it isn’t your birthday, it is never a bad day for cake!)