Top 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Birthday Celebrations 

In the most basic form birthdays are the anniversaries of the day when someone was born. For many cultures around the world birthdays are an opportunity to celebrate. For instance, by organising a birthday party where friends and family get together to gift presents to the birthday person.

Birthday celebrations are most popular among children. They are an opportunity to socialize and of course to treat everyone with delicious birthday cakes and party food. But there are many things about birthday parties not many people know about. On this article we will explore some of the most interesting facts about birthdays.

Interesting Birthday Traditions from Around the World

Some cultures celebrate kids’ birthdays with some wild and whacky practices. Here is our pick for the top birthday traditions from around the world.

1. Nose Grease (Canada): In Canada, the birthday boy/girl is ambushed by friends who rub butter on their nose to ward off bad luck for the rest of the year.
2. Flour Dusting (Jamaica): Kids in Jamaica are ambushed by their friends and dusted with flour on their birthday.
3. Cake on the head (Ireland): A newborn baby’s forehead is sprinkled with a left over slice of their parents’ wedding cake. This is to give the child good luck.
4. Ear pulling (Hungary): The birthday boy/girl will have their ears pulled by their friends while a saying which translates to “may you live so long that your ears touch your ankles” is repeated.
5. Bad Luck Clock (China): It’s bad luck in China to give someone a clock or watch.

Some Birthday Statistics

Kids’ birthday parties aren’t all cakes, mess and presents. There’s some interesting (and thought provoking) statistics behind them as well.

Not all cultures celebrate birthday parties after one year, in China and Vietnam it’s the baby’s 30th day which is the biggest celebration, followed by annual birthdays.

The 100th day is a huge milestone for Korean Babies.

Jewish culture celebrates the Benei Mitzvá when boys turn 13 and girls 12.

Some South and Central American countries celebrate the Quinceañera for girls turning 15 y.o. as a preparation for adulthood.

Middle class parents report spending over $800 on birthday parties for their kids as a minimum. 0

Up to 73% of party hosts prefer sending out invitations online rather than paper.

What’s Happened Since Your Last Birthday?

Your body goes through a lot every year – here’s some of the craziest things that have happened between birthdays.

1. 31 536 000 seconds have passed
2. Your hair has grown 12 centimetres, and your nails 4 centimetres.
3. You’ve taken 15 768 000 breaths
4. You’ll have had about 1 460 dreams
5. Over 76.5 million people have been born
6. 2 688 000 litres of blood have been pumped through your body

How Common is Your Birthday?

Ever noticed how your Facebook feed fills up with birthdays around July/August/September/October every year?

It’s no coincidence. Have a look at this heat map below. It shows which birthdays are most common.

One theory as to the peaks in this time of the year is the frequency of summer marriages occurring in December through to February. More weddings generally equates to more babies, and there shouldn’t be a need to explain why!

 

The Birthday Paradox

Have you ever randomly met someone sharing the exact same birthday as yours? Well, considering that the chance of that occurrence is only 1/365 or 0.27% it is amazing. But contrary to what you might think, you don’t need to meet 365 people for your chance to meet someone sharing your exact same birthday.

The birthday paradox states that you only need 23 random people for your chance to increase to 50%. So next time you’re having a birthday party and you have more than 20 people in the room, you can try it just for fun.

But, if you manage to get together around 30 people your chance will increase to 70%. Even better double that number and have a 60 people gathering and your chance will go up to 99%. Interesting isn’t it?

What Happened On My Birthday?

Have you ever been curious as to the world-wide events which happened on your birthday?

Here’s a couple of sites which help you find out.

1. Birthday Facts

This site tells you who you share your birthday with, and any famous events which happened on that day.

2. When was I conceived

This site provides information on what was going on around the time of your birth!

It’s awesome fun to see what happened on your birthday and on the birthdays of people you know!

5 Quick Birthday Cakes Facts

1. Ancient Romans and Greeks added honey to sweeten their cakes.
2. Cake used to just refer to small rounded breads which were sweeter than normal. It wasn’t until the 18th century that the word meant what it means today.
3. Cupcakes get their name from the fact that they were made only from cup-fulls of ingredients.
4. Google’s Ngram viewer tells users how many times a word has been mentioned in books or literature. It turns out people have known about cake for a long time – but who knows what happened around 1730s?!

5. If you refine the search to ‘birthday cake’, it shows that people didn’t associate cakes and birthdays until the 1870s!