For those who are wondering, Colorado was brilliant and beautifully sunny. I walked on a frozen lake for the first time, resulting in so much snow packed into the open toes of my walking boot that I wasn't sure if I had toes anymore. But worth it. Now I am back just in time for my birthday. Thank you, thank you. I am now the blissfully boring age of 23.
Something I overheard on a Criminal Minds episode had me wondering just where the birthday tradition came from. So I thought I would do a little digging and share my curious findings with all of you.
The celebration of birthdays wasn't possible until Ancient Egyptians started taking their astrology very seriously. They came to believe that the alignment of the planets and stars at the time of one's birth had drastic and far reaching consequences. And while the astrologers and astronomers of the time might not have cared about Joe Blo down on the street corner's birthday, the pharaoh’s was another matter. Because the pharaoh was revered as a deity and considered to be the middleman between the people and the gods, his fate theoretically determined the fate of the nation as a whole.
There is no record of the first birthday celebration. However, the first birthday celebration on record is that of the Old Testament 'Pharaoh.' Among other events, he had his baker killed. Not exactly a...kosher way of honoring the holiday and one of the supports die hard Christians use to claim that God hates birthdays. Needless to say, though Christian, I still vote in favor of birthday cake.
The reason China isn't mentioned in this origins tale despite having a calendar system during the time of Ancient Egypt is because traditionally the Chinese didn't celebrate individual birthdays. No matter what day you were born, your official age increased one year on new year's day.
Our next stop is the Ancient Greek and Roman age. The Romans celebrated birthdays in a similar fashion as the Egyptians - mostly in honor of the Roman emperors. Later the practice did trickle down to the wealthy and male. Ancient Greeks, on the other hand, were less concerned about people than about their gods. Here's a fun one that will ring some bells, the Greek moon goddess Artemis was honored once each month with round cakes lit with candles symbolizing the shining moon.
That's all good, but there has to be more to birthdays than the narcissistic celebration of oneself, right? There is. These Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that everyone had a protector spirit that visited them every year on their birthday and that this spirit had a direct line to a particular god (dictated by the specific date of the birthday). So I'm guessing that people made special appeals to their protector spirits
on their birthdays. Like...say a wish?
Another prominent belief circulating the world at that time was that a person was actually more vulnerable to bad spirits on their birthday than any other time of year. To protect this individual, friends and family would bring gifts, give well wishes and create a general cacophony to ward off these bad spirits. Sounds like quite the party.
Jews and Christians during the first and second centuries condemned the practice as being an offshoot of idolatry. It wasn't until the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity that this began to change. We got a slight melting pot of Roman pagan traditions and Christian beliefs.
Now in my research, I ran into something pretty funny. Historically, it is undeniable that the birthday celebration is pagan in origin. Pagan essentially means 'not Christian' and guess what? Ancient Egypt wasn't exactly Christian. For that to have been possible, something very funky would have had to happen to the space-time continuum. Yet I ran into some very polarized modern views on birthdays.
Certain online aficionados have decided that celebrating birthdays is a sin. I hate to break it to those people, but it doesn't say that anywhere in The Bible. Besides, if modern Christians suddenly decided to knock every holiday with pagan influences we'd be saying goodbye to Easter and Christmas just to name two. On the complete other end of the spectrum are the fanatic defenders of birthdays who claim that birthdays are in no way connected to paganism. That's not true either. These people are so caught up in the negative connotations of the word 'pagan' that they've forgotten what it means.
Different cultures and subcultures have their own reasons for celebrating birthdays. Some are good and some are questionable, but I would put money of birthdays being, in the grand scheme of things, far removed from the big bad. Then again that's just my opinion. You can always say no to cake and presents and ice cream. That's your choice.
