It's JUST a birthday, you know.

It seems to me that there is a growing trend among people I know: unnecessarily-prolonged birthday celebration extravaganzas!  Let's face it, people, it's really not that big a deal that you have "managed to survive" yet another year.

Yes, when you were a kid, I'm sure your parents made a big deal of your birthday.  They'd plan a party, and invite your friends over.  You'd have a sleepover or a pool party, or they'd rent one of those inflatable castles for you to jump around in all day.  They'd come up with a theme like Princesses, or Lisa Frank, or that year's biggest Super Hero or Disney character.  Or, maybe you had a roller skating party or a bowling party, or an all-day Chuck-E-Cheese's blowout!

But, let's face it, now that you're a grown-up, it's time you knew the truth.  While you and your friends were gorging on pizza and cake, watching "PG-13" movies until midnight, and jumping and laughing until you puked, your parents were busy celebrating one thing.....YOU were one year closer to adulthood!  Sure they had all those fond memories of the day you came into their lives, but the fact remains that you were one year closer to being responsible for yourself, and that was worth celebration!

However, many of my adult friends seem to have gone birthday-crazy!  Now, some of you celebrate your "birthday weekend" or your "birthday week."  I've even seen some people who, when their birthday fell in the middle of a week, have begun their celebrations the weekend before their birthdays and continued them all the way through the end of the weekend following their birthdays!  Does anyone really need 10 whole days of birthday celebration?  That's 2.7% of the entire year you've spent celebrating!



In the dark ages, when people of 40 were "old" and people of 60 or older were unheard-of, it was more understandable that people would make a big deal of their birthdays.  In fact, in those days, and even in much more recent centuries, it was a big deal that people had survived another year.  They fought starvation and disease and invasions by rival nations.  People were injured and killed in wars, fires, robberies, and farming accidents.  Even as late as 1950, some places in the United Stated experienced 30 infant deaths of 1000 babies born, a number that had dropped to just over 6 deaths per 1000 by 2003.

If you think about it, there are still millions of people worldwide who do have to struggle day to day to survive.  Starvation is rampant in some countries, people are still mugged and murdered, wars are waged that kill brave young men and women, and people are injured and killed in work accidents all over the globe.  Around the planet, people of all ages live with horrible diseases, simply because they cannot afford the medications or treatments that could cure them.  These are the people who really deserve to celebrate surviving another year of life.  Yet, some of these people have led such scattered and poor lives that they don't even know when they were born or how old they actually are.  These people, who scrape a life for themselves out of nothing, don't spend their birthdays lost in celebration; they spend each day of their lives trying to live long enough to see the next day.

So, why is it that adults here in the U.S. and other prosperous countries spend days and days getting drunk and partying like they've achieved some unattainable goal by simply living?  I honestly don't know.

The last time I had (or wanted) a real birthday party was in the sixth grade.  That year, and the years before, I'd have a sleepover party and invite a half-dozen girlfriends over.  We'd spend hours fixing one another's hair and watching movies starring the latest teen heartthrobs and drinking six different sodas mixed together in a plastic Solo cup.  And we always had fun!

With each passing year, birthdays became less and less a big deal.  In our family, you got to pick what you wanted to eat for your birthday dinner.  My annual birthday dinner always included Mac & Cheese.  I'd get a nice gift or two from my parents, and my grandmother would bake me a cheesecake.  Even today, that's how I choose to celebrate my birthday.  Dinner with my family (though sometimes it's at a restaurant these days), cheesecake from my grandmother, and a gift or two.  The older I get, the more practical my gifts get.....yet somehow I like them so much more than the gifts I got as a kid.

Maybe American adults, rather than celebrating an excuse to get drunk, should instead celebrate having had one more year to enjoy living in this prosperous nation where you are free to become anyone you want to be.  You've had one more year to spend with your friends and relatives, your spouses and children.  You might get a gift or two, from the people who love you, and for these you should be truly thankful.  Someone might cook you your favorite dinner or take you to your favorite restaurant.  Let's leave the partying and silliness to the kids.  And, if you're really lucky, maybe someone will bring you a cheesecake!