My Grandmother on Birthdays

In an earlier post, I alluded to my grandmother being old, but not knowing how old she is. The other day, she said something to the effect that there’s no reason that one needs to mark down their date of birth. According to her, at birth you have not done anything yet, so there’s not much for you to remember. In other words, a day worth marking down is the day that you contribute something. The woman is deep.

The whole grandmother-not-knowing-her-birthday thing actually explains a lot about my perspective on birthdays. In short, I don’t care for them. Never have, probably never will. I’ve pretended in the past to care, but I was just pretending. And this goes for my birthday as well as other people’s special days. My sentiments are not out of spite or a feeling that birthdays are somehow oppressive, although they can be oppressive on the pocket. My sentiments are simple. My grandmother and people of her generation did not know their birthdays. Therefore, they didn’t celebrate birthdays. My parents both know when they were born because identification cards had been introduced. But growing up with parents who didn’t have birthdays and didn’t celebrate them, they didn’t grow up thinking that their birthdays were that big of a deal. [As a side note, I’d like to do some research into whether Africans began celebrating birthdays upon conversion because they began to celebrate the birthday of Jesus, because of some marketing campaign, or for some other reason.]

Most traditions get passed down generation to generation. For instance, if your parents or, perhaps more importantly, your community didn’t pay any attention to birthdays, Valentines Day, or Halloween, most likely neither would you. Birthdays not being a huge deal was the tradition passed down to me. I do, however, remember a few makeshift celebrations when I was younger. I recall my parents half-heartedly buying me a cake to take to school just because that’s what they saw other people doing. They didn't want to completely buy in to the craze, but they didn't want me to feel left out either. But as soon as I grew old enough (around age 9) and they could tell that I wasn’t going to be seriously damaged for them not worshiping me on my birthday, the half-ass birthdays ceased. Coming to the States is a difficult thing for parents who weren’t already indoctrinated into Western ways. For them, I’m sure that the obsessive birthday culture was a bit odd.

To this day, I have a hard time telling people when it’s my birthday. Largely because, I don’t really care all that much. And no, I’m not just saying that. I love a good hang-out, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be on my birthday. It just turns out that friends who care about you will only turn up en mass if you tell some them that the gathering is in celebration of the day you were born.

I hope this doesn’t come across as me passing judgment on those who emphatically celebrate birthdays, because I’m not. It’s more of just me providing some color to explain my stance of birthdays. A few years ago, I though that my perspective on birthdays was just that, my perspective -- something that I created. After thinking through the history of birthdays throughout generations of my family, it’s clear that that my belief is something that was passed down. What other thoughts do I have that I think are mine, but are actually passed down by my grandmother and those who came before her?