Notes from Around the Sundial: Birthdays
Created | Updated Dec 5, 2010
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!
Birthdays
Birthdays come once a year, and they mark the date on which you were born, right? Seemples. Well no, it's actually not quite so simple as all that. I've assembled here a few peculiar facts about birthdays.
Some people have two or more birthdays a year. Queen Elizabeth II, ruler of more countries than I care to mention here, celebrates her real birthday of 21st April with her family. Her subjects celebrate on a day known as the Queen's Official Birthday, which is in June, but exactly which day in June depends on which country you are in. In Australia, for example, it is always the first Saturday, but in the UK it can be any of the first three Saturdays. So the Queen can have her birthday celebrated on three or more different days. Luckily, Her Majesty doesn't add 1 to her age at each birthday, otherwise she'd be over 160 years old!
Some people have a birthday only once every four years. For the 1 in every 1,461 people who is born on the 29th February, their exact birthday exists only in leap years, which come once every four years. One such person was Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, who wrote such famous operas as The Barber of Seville and William Tell. Most leap day babies celebrate on 1st March in non-leap years.
The most famous birthday of all, Christmas Day, the birthday of Jesus Christ, is a fake. The Bible is the only reference for the life of Jesus and it gives no date for Christ's birth. In fact, it describes the event by saying 'There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over the flocks by night'. In Palestine, shepherds only do that in the summertime, so it seems likely that Jesus was born in summer. The date of 25 December was chosen because it was a pagan festival, Saturnalia. The early Christians decided that one of the ways of getting the pagan Romans to accept their new religion was to import all the big pagan festivals into Christianity. So they took over Saturnalia and declared it to be Christ's birthday. Across the centuries, there have been times when people thought it wrong to celebrate 25th December - the Pilgrim Fathers who brought Christianity to America, for example, disapproved of this holiday, because the date wasn't confirmed by the Bible. Scottish Presbyterians did the same, so the locals responded by making 1st January into a big festival, Hogmanay.
In some countries, birthdays aren't celebrated. In Greece, for example, until recently, people celebrated on the feast day of the saint after whom they were named, rather than on their own birthday. So all the Georges would celebrate on St George's Day (23rd April). Since George is a very popular Greek saint, this would mean a sizeable part of the population would celebrate on this day.
In Germany, it is forbidden by tradition to celebrate a birthday before the actual day. So if your birthday is on a Monday, don't bother organising a party for the day before, because the Germans will just frown at you.
In the year 1752, the English-speaking world adopted the Gregorian Calendar. This necessitated leaving out 11 days, so the 4th October 1752 was followed by the 15th October 1752. For the next year, people were puzzled as to whether they should celebrate their birthday 365 days after their last one, or on the day with the right name in the following year, which was only 354 days since their last one. This eventually sorted itself out, although some peculiarities did ensue, such as the Battle of the Boyne (1st July 1690) being ever after commemorated on 12th July, which is still a public holiday in Northern Ireland.
Here on h2g2, where conversations can extend over years or even decades, we look on birthdays as an excuse for many days of celebration – any excuse to have some 
and 
. So let's make The Post's birthday a big one!
