Birthday Rituals

Scream when you get to the bottom

As we come up on Max’s 1st birthday, I wanted to do a dive into the history of birthdays, leaning on my most trusted source for scholarly research PumpitUpParty.com

Spoiler alert, birthdays are witchy as heck.

According to Pump it up Party (and I have no reason to doubt them) early civilization had no way of tracking time except by the natural eb and flow of the moon and sun and their daily coffee ritual. It wasn’t until we started marking the cycle of the moon, and then the seasons, that we noticed that things tend to repeat themselves, and thus the first calendars were invented and with them the opportunity to ask people over every year and insist they bring you gifts you probably won’t like very much.

The internet doesn’t seem to entirely agree on the origin of the cake, but P.I.U.P says that as birthdays were so intertwined with the cycles of the moon, the Greeks would honour the lunar goddess, Artemis, by offering up a moon-shaped cake adorned with candles intended to recreate the radiance of the moon.

My other scholarly hub, reddit disagrees:

In Pagan cultures, it is said they thought that days of major change, such as “birth” days, welcomed evil spirits, and so they lit candles as a way of representing the light in the darkness. Noisemakers were also brought on to scare away any unwanted evil, suggesting that birthday celebrations existed as a form of protection.

In my family, when it came time to cut the cake, my mom would tell us to ‘scream when you get to the bottom’ to release your wish into the universe. Glad to hear we’ve been scaring off evil spirits this whole time as well.

I always thought ‘screaming when you get to the bottom’ was a British tradition and when I got to the US and started working on Summer Camp Island I always smugly told people ‘well in England…’

Then we started hiring British people and I soon found out it is NOT a British tradition and it is quite possible my mom just made it up. Major props to my mom if true. I did google it, and it looks like 2 other families did it as well - one in England and one in Washington State, so I assume they are my long lost siblings. Good for you mom.

This google search also led me to the question:

According to Quora, it depends on the cake.

Standard butter cakes are dense with flour so would need a very loud sound like an explosion to fall over.

Chiffon and Angel Food Cake, which are made mainly from egg whites, are more sensitive to shouting.

One can only conclude that cakes are made of evil spirits and if you’re going to encounter one, you better make sure they are made mainly from egg whites.

Based on todays research, the theme of Max’s birthday will be this:

Would love to hear any site specific birthday traditions you had growing up.