It was fun when my so was born on my 30th birthday. I also got a heavy-duty Rawlings hoodie which I still wear.
Back when I had a Facebook account, I turned off the “display my birthday” feature. I think birthdays are stupid and I didn’t care about getting all those obligatory FB birthday greetings. To my surprise, a few people somehow knew it was my birthday without FB’s prompting and posted the “happy birthday” wishes anyway. These people were exclusively female. Other people (also exclusively women) noticed and joined in. Some of them added comments about how something was “wrong” with Facebook because it wasn’t reminding them of my birthday.
I also worked in a female-dominated workplace for about six years, and they made a big deal about birthdays. When I started working there, they immediately demanded to know when my birthday was so they could put it on the calendar and make sure that a birthday card was purchased and circulated, cupcakes were ordered, etc.
Almost of the “birthday people” I’ve known have been female. I did know one guy who threw himself a huge 50th birthday party, and at that party I recall a few people commenting how odd it was for a man to be making a big deal about his birthday.
My theory is pretty much the same as WhyNot’s: it’s a validation of status within a social circle or a relationship. I put it in the same category as women who place huge importance on Valentine’s Day.
No no no, your birth is your parent’s accomplishment. Your birthday is yours - you’ve survived yet another year without managing to get yourself killed somehow.
That said, I’ve known few “birthday people,” but they’ve all been women. Most “pot luck people” and all “baby shower people” have been women too. On the other hand, “let’s celebrate a pointless sports thing people” are typically guys, though I did know a “it’s the Red Sox Opening Game so let’s have hotdogs!” woman.
Out of the folks I know, it seems as though more women are “birthday people.” I think women are more likely than men to want gifts and attention.
Personally, I’d classify “birthday people” as women, children, and the elderly.
Obviously, yes. Not just birthdays, but women are more into holidays and “holiday spirit” in general.
I “celebrate” my birthday and completely taking the day off. No going to work. No kids. No housework. No wife*. Nada. Just a day to do what I want.
*Ok, my wife can give me one certain gift that night.
Wait, so you knew your so as a baby? And you thought, “as soon as this baby is old enough we’re totally gonna date!”
How old was your so when you officially got together? Did your so’s parents think, “Oh! So THAT’s why 30yr old seal_cleaner had such fun learning that our child had been born! This was planned all along! Ummm …kinda weird actually.”?
Or was it an arranged marriage type situation and your so’s parents called you to the hospital and said “seal_cleaner, happy birthday, we’d like to introduce you to your future so!”?
I do this too. The only difference is that I choose a different date each year. Come on November 3.
Well yeah. I had a totally horrible boss once and one of our first indications that something was amiss was that, during our first week together as a team, we found out her birthday had been that same week and she hadn’t invited to coffee. Everybody involved was from Spain, where birthday celebrations at work are commonplace and may range from that minimal paying for one round of coffee to having lunch brought in by the company every Friday and celebrating that week’s birthdays; we were abroad, a new team just coming together… any occasion to get to know each other was good. My brother’s company went the “company brings food every Friday” route after the competition for “who can bring the fanciest food to invite” got too far. I’ve been in “birthday celebrations” at work where the coffee from the machine was actually free, but the birthday person served it and we toasted to their good health.
I was in Sweden for the last 15 months and the people from the office brought brunch every Friday; they rotated when to bring it. Several of them picked the week of their birthday, or even of their child’s birthday.
I’ve always been unusual because not only am I not a birthday person, I’ve been known to actually forget my own birthday. (This amuses my father way more than it should, for some reason.)
But some mitigating factors: my bday is December 7, which until 12 years ago was one of the most depressing days you could have a birthday on. Happy Pearl Harbor Day! :dubious:
Also, in high school and college, I was always studying for or taking final exams.
Then when I started regular work, we always had end-of-year publishing deadlines that made life hell from November until mid-December.
So I’m out of the habit.
Hey, sister! I feel the same, except my SO will take me out. But it is my birthday, and I do take the day off.
I think we’d see more birthday guys if it was more acceptable to be a birthday guy. Every time I’ve seen a guy even get a tiny bit excited over a birthday, all of his friends make fun of him until he stops!
'n’s for sale! Fresh 'n’s, hot out of the oven! Getchore 'n’s here…
I’m a birthday person in the sense that I want as much cake as possible throughout the year
I strenuously object to the characterization of celebrating minor anniversaries as being imaginary and stupid! I suspect my ex-wife would agree with you, though. 
I have no idea why I tend to remember dates like that, and unlike your ex, I would never expect someone else to remember them. But I also have consistently run in circles of people who were also big birthday/anniversary folks, so I suspect there’s some cultural influence.
Which reminds me that I need to start making plans, as I’m only about three months away from my half-birthday…
I’m racking my brain here for what happened on Dec. 7, 2003.
Question to those of you who are indifferent to birthdays.
Did your family of origin celebrate birthdays or make a big deal of them in your childhood?
The reason I ask is because mine did not. All my friends’ parents did, and many of them got special gifts for milestone birthdays, like Sweet 16 and so forth. My parents were on vacation on my 16th birthday and didn’t even call to say happy birthday.
As an adult, I do not like to make a big deal. It is important to me though, but only because it was always ignored when I was a kid so in the interest of taking charge of my life as an adult, I want to celebrate my birthday. However – and this thread explains SO much – mostly, when I try to organize something, an outing, a meal out, a small party at my house, whathaveyou, for my birthday, people don’t really show up. I’ll invite 20, plan for 10 and then 3 show up. I’ve given up and now go out of my way to NOT make plans so that I don’t have to continue experiencing crushing disappointment each year, when I think I’m going to have a more-fun-than-usual day and it just turns out, nobody STILL gives a fuck about my birthday.
So I’m not sure if I’m really a horrible person that nobody wants to hang with or if it’s just not a big deal to most other well-adjusted, non-dysfunctional adults because they got the birthday party thing out of their systems when they were kids?
Ever since I turned 21 I haven’t cared in the slightest. I actually don’t even usually notice my own birthday until some one from my family calls off normal schedule, and half the time I answer in a bit of a panic, wondering what’s wrong that they would need to call on a Wednesday.
I would very much like to have the entire world forget that I have a birthday, because when I do remember, it always makes me depressed in the “One more year gone, and I still haven’t accomplished X yet” sense.
Dogzilla, I’ve always attributed my lack of birthday spirit to the fact that I was a twin. We had birthday parties during our childhood and pre-teen years. But once our individual personalities were established, there was no more of that. So I never felt like my birthday represented anything about me, as an individual.
But now that I think about it some more, I don’t think that has anything to do with it. I’m just not a “let’s celebrate!” type of person. I’m just not sentimental enough to get attached to a day.
From reading this thread, it appears to me that the indifferent attitude I’ve encountered as an adult is because it looks like most people think birthdays are for kids. I am still trying to make up for things as an adult that I missed out on as a kid, so I wonder if the “birthday people” phenomenon we’re talking about in this thread is other people like me who are also trying to make up for lost birthday parties.
All that said, I do hate the “we MUST celebrate everyone’s birthday” at the office. I am not in the office to socialize or cement interpersonal relationships. While I want healthy, positive, respectful, productive working relationships with my coworkers, I don’t think think doing this thing that could be highly loaded with baggage for some is really the best practice. We do have other social events that I participate in and find appropriate. All you have to do is forget one person’s birthday or allow one person to perceive that someone got more attention than they did on their birthdays and whoo-boy. :rolleyes: I prefer to keep things strictly professional at work and strictly personal at home. I don’t like letting one bleed into the other.
Anyway, in general, it does seem like it’s a woman thing in the sense that more often, women seem to have higher expectations of how they expect other people to behave with regard to their birthdays.
There is much wisdom here.