Monday, June 12, 2006

Birthdays

I’ve been at two birthday parties this weekend. My father is now a few years above 50, while my grandmother hit 80. Apart from probably gaining a few pounds from two consecutive days of eating a lot of meat and then some extra cake, not much has changed, though. They’re a year older, I’m getting older, but that’s pretty much it. No one is any different than the day before that. What’s the big deal about birthdays anyway then?
Some explanation is probably found in the Birthday article in Wikipedia. The article has less than a dozen lines on history and 2 pages on festivities. That’s how I understand birthdays, too. If you’re young, you get special treatment for that day and make a party with friends. If you’re older, it’s also an amazing excuse for a family get together. When you have a reasonably normal family (well, as normal as families get), it’s a good party, where you get to see all your aunts slightly tipsy. When you go out with friends you get to see them more than slightly tipsy, as a bonus.
That’s what birthdays really are, a great excuse for a great party. You’re not celebrating that a person is one year older, you don’t throw a party just to get gifts, either (well most people don’t, at least), you don’t really enjoy paying the bill at the bar if it was your birthday, you simply get out of the house and party. It’s a shame really, that there has to be an excuse for a particular person to be a year older in order to throw a party. Or maybe I'm missing some deeper meaning?

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes ,.. birthdays are lose of time.

2:30 PM  

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