Birthdays

Birthdays are a bit like New Year. If you're Jewish, you get another New Year thrown in aside from December 31 so you have at least 3 times in a year where you can assess your current status/achievements and mental health.

It's a like a thrice yearly litmus test.

Am I blue? Perhaps I'm in the pink at the mo or even a bit green around the gills. Perhaps I am in the red, or even really grey today.

Anyway - voila - another birthday has been celebrated.

Why in fact do we celebrate birthdays? To say - yup - you've survived another year .

Or- aren't we all glad you were born? Hooray!

Don't ask me. According to my parents this hedonistic and yearly celebratory ritual is a generational thing.

"What - you think that people that should remember and turn up at a place of your choosing?..we didn't make all this fuss."

Or..."Well - we didn't celebrate all these milestones like you lot do...the 30th, the 40th, the 60th blah blah. We did our 21st and that was that. "

Quite.

So maybe things have changed. In my world it is a chance to spoil your friends, make them feel good and yes, make an extra effort.

However, there is always next year.

Unlike most things in life, you know you get another chance to celebrate it or even spoil a friend another time.

That's the good stuff about birthdays. There may be a finite amount of them in a lifetime - but unlike a tribe I visited in Niger once who get one birthday when they are 7 days old - - perhaps we are luckier than most.

At least we get to remember our birthdays even if we drink too much to have clarity of recall.

Bring out the cards and pressies.