Birthday Traditions

Iris’s 90th Birthday Party video

With my mind being on birthdays recently I started thinking about birthday traditions. A Google search brings up lots of hits on traditions for kids but not so many for grown-ups. As I think back in my life and can see how easy it is to let birthdays slip by without doing much to really celebrate the day. Some people are great at making sure they have fun celebrations in their life. Some families have well-developed birthday traditions. My family isn’t one of them. So this is an area I could use some work on. Maybe it comes from my family culture. My mom is very practical and recently my dad said that he didn’t know how to celebrate. It seems to me that birthday traditions don’t necessarily need to be fancy or expensive but it takes planning and effort to make sure they become traditions. I also think that sometimes birthday traditions need to evolve to meet the families changing needs.

Last year I had lots of fun celebrating by birthday 50 times during the year. I want to do more in the coming years to develop some good adult birthday traditions. With my birthday coming up in May it is time to start thinking about some new traditions. Do you have any suggestions? What birthday traditions do you have or wish to start with your family?