Since he is the owner of the www. MyFastBasket. com, an online gift basket and gourmet foods website, have I realized that the most celebrated event. . . . Drum roll please. . . . The Birthday! I never really thought about it before, but thought the most famous birthdays event worldwide.

 

What makes birthdays so popular? Well, everyone has. . . duh. Another obvious fact is that one of the few occasions birthdays are celebrated in almost every society and culture of our world. And although we may celebrate this universal conception in various ways during the seven continents, the basic idea is the same. To celebrate the life and growth of our friends and families.

 

Here in America, we celebrate birthdays most usually decorated with a birthday cake and showering the birthday boy or girl with birthday presents. We sing “Happy Birthday” as they wish blow out birthday candles and a special birthday. Which, if you really think about it, is pretty superstitious. And asked me how to celebrate our brothers and sisters around the world birthday. Here are a few traditions that I found interesting. Some of them were very similar to American traditions were, some of them look alike, and some were just very different.

 

In China, friends and family members are invited to celebrate with the birthday child, but of cakes, noodles, they are offered for the celebration. The birthday boy or girl is expected to pay in relation to their parents and are offered gifts of money. Very similar to the American version with the main differences is the food served and the expected types of gifts.

 

Another country that is similar to us in Bolivia. At the age of 16, girls are expected to wear a white dress and waltz with their fathers and other guys. This celebration is very similar to our “Sweet 16″ birthday parties in the States. In England, the symbolic objects in the cake, as mixed as coins, are predicting that the birthday boy or girl will one day be rich. It can be a little more dangerous, but cake is cake right?

 

Some countries to celebrate much different than our own, are surprisingly similar. To celebrate, many Latin nations around the world what a “Quinceañera” known in which a girls fifteenth birthday is a unique and special way of celebrating her other birthdays. The same tradition is called by different names in different Latin American countries and the customs vary with different Latin nations, such as the specific colors of the girls, as in Ecuador, where the birthday girl must wear be worn pink. Some customs are very specific on how many people are invited, as in Puerto Rico, where the birthday child fourteen members of the boys and girls with their needs, even at age fifteen. And set some traditions even where the celebrations will take place, as in Cuba, where the party must be kept in the girls at home or with relatives at home. Such festivals are very similar to our Sweet 16, but more formal, like a wedding. These birthday parties are so special and so popular now that some can cost as much as a wedding or even a new car.

 

There are also countries that have very unique birthday traditions, far from each other in the world. Take, for example in Germany. When a man the age of 30, not a friend, is the birthday tradition, it sweep the stairs of City Hall. Friends are invited to throw rubble on the stairs, and when he is finished, they will throw more rubbish and so on. This is for every girl that this man reached the age of 30 and showing still does not have a girlfriend and that he cleaned a house very well. A “good catch” perhaps?

 

In Canada, the birthday boy lured ambushed and their nose is greased with butter or margarine for, (get this), good luck. The idea is that with a big nose makes the child too slippery for bad luck to catch them. Sounds like fun! Where’s the toast?

 

But the one that really caught my attention was Vietnam, where every citizen’s birthday is celebrated on New Year’s Day. Because the Vietnamese do not know or acknowledge the exact day they were born, each baby turns one on Tet (Vietnamese New Year), regardless of when he or she was born this year. And on the first morning of Tet, adults congratulate children getting older by one year with red envelopes that contain “Lucky Money” or li xi. These envelopes are the children of parents, siblings, relatives and close friends given. I suspect that this is easier than a cake bake for 85 million people.

 

So there you have it. Birthdays are celebrated almost everywhere and very different from country to country, but the important thing is that they celebrated together with familiar faces of friends and family members.

 

In case I do not know, talk soon, Happy Birthday!