Birthday Ritual Musings

We have a few family and friend birthdays to celebrate in October. I'm prepping for one this afternoon. I've been thinking about the typical USA birthday traditions and wondering how they became so prevalent as they are so humiliating! Especially for children's parties. If you ponder them for a moment, you may come to my conclusion that they are odd little rituals that we could just as well leave off.

Did you ever have to endure the "birthday spanking to grow on" when you were a child? Sometimes at your birthday party in front of all the little kids? Yes, I know it never hurt, but what was the point? Is it leftover from some superstition, or just to make you wait longer for the cake?

Did you ever do "pin the tail on the donkey" or "blind man's bluff" or something similar at a party? You know, the one where you are blindfolded, disoriented, and then became the object of everyone's hilarity as you groped around?

What about birthday hats? They are awfully similar to dunce caps. 

Blowing out the candles? Who started the tradition of melting wax all over the top of someone's cake, and then asking them to blow germs all over it before people ate it?

The Birthday Song-- can you think of a more embarrassing tune? I have refused to be sung to at all for the past 4 years. It is liberating on my special day not to be the focus of that song! Or any song! I don't like standing there with everyone staring at me singing a song that I am not supposed to participate in. It is usually sung out of tune and at the wrong pitch (nobody tunes up before they start singing it, have you noticed?) and led at a glacial pace. It drags, it sags. Folks, it's just not working anymore. But please don't substitute anything; it's just plain embarrassing to be sung at. 

Now I realize that some folks are just sentimental and these things are part of their good memories. For example, my family still has a shrunken, melted mass of plastic that decorated a cake top for 55 years. It was originally a little cowboy on a horse, from a set of toys. It rode to the top of a child's cake and continued to be exposed to flames until the poor horse and rider were unrecognizable to anyone not "in the know." But to have that melted mass on the cake was important to grandpa, to give him a good feeling I guess, and good memories of his family's birthdays gone by. Maybe I am not that sentimental.

I think that Americans are more and more "think outside of the box" type people and can come up with better birthday traditions, as indeed a lot of families have. When I was growing up, we got to pick a birthday trip in our beautiful and diverse state of Oregon. The coast, the desert, the state's tallest mountain and the world's deepest lake were all a few hours away for an afternoon to remember. I count my teen years by which places we were at for each birthday.

My own family have rather quiet home birthdays, partly because of construction (I have a lot of photos with messy or unfinished backgrounds!). We pick out a special meal, and a dessert. We sometimes have a pie instead of a cake (today we're making a chocolate cake upon request. Last year it was donuts!). My children have grown up with a candle in their own personal slice because we are germphobes (but still I wonder why we do even that candle thing?). We don't have humiliating party games. I can't get my better half to quit singing the birthday song to the kids, but if they are young enough they will sink under the table while it is sung. So I suppose we have a foot in the past, but I am open to other ideas!

Which humiliating birthday rituals have you left off? What have you substituted?