Birthday
Many religions celebrate the birth of their founders or religious figures with special holidays (e.g. Christmas, Mawlid, Buddha's Birthday, Krishna Janmashtami, and Gurpurb).
In certain parts of the world, an individual's birthday is celebrated by a party featuring a specially made cake.
The celebrated individual may make a silent wish and attempt to blow out the candles in one breath; if successful, superstition holds that the wish will be granted.
This phenomenon is exploited when a person claims to be only a quarter of their actual age, by counting their leap-year birthday anniversaries only.
Some studies show people are more likely to die on their birthdays, with explanations including excessive drinking, suicide, cardiovascular events due to high stress or happiness, efforts to postpone death for major social events, and death certificate paperwork errors.
[18] Origen, in his commentary "On Levites," wrote that Christians should not only refrain from celebrating their birthdays but should look at them with disgust as a pagan custom.
[19] Saint's days was typically celebrated on the anniversary of their martyrdom or death, considered the occasion of or preparation for their entrance into Heaven or the New Jerusalem.
[22][23] A good portion of Muslims (and Arab Christians) who have emigrated to the United States and Europe celebrate birthdays as customary especially for children, while some abstain.
[24] There is also much controversy regarding the permissibility of celebrating Mawlid, (the anniversary of the birth of Muhammad), as some Muslims judge the custom as an unacceptable practice according to Islamic tradition.
[25] Many monasteries celebrate the anniversary of Buddha's birth, usually in a highly formal, ritualized manner.
Hindus regard death to be more auspicious than birth, since the person is liberated from the bondages of material society.
It was customary to have the board furnished on that day with an ampler supply than common: the richer people eat wholly baked cow, horse, camel, or donkey (Greek: ὄνον), while the poorer classes use instead the smaller kinds of cattle.
[29] The Chinese word for "year(s) old" (t 歲, s 岁, suì) is entirely different from the usual word for "year(s)" (年, nián), reflecting the former importance of Chinese astrology and the belief that one's fate was bound to the stars imagined to be in opposition to the planet Jupiter at the time of one's birth.
Because of the importance attached to the influence of these stars in ancient China and throughout the Sinosphere, East Asian age reckoning previously began with one at birth and then added years at each Chinese New Year, so that it formed a record of the suì one had lived through rather than of the exact amount of time from one's birth.
Celebrating the lunisolar birthday remains common on Taiwan while growing increasingly uncommon on the mainland.
Longevity noodles are another traditional food consumed on the day,[30] although western-style birthday cakes are increasingly common among urban Chinese.
Hongbaos—red envelopes stuffed with money, now especially the red 100 RMB notes—are the usual gift from relatives and close family friends for most children.
[citation needed] Children's birthday parties are the most important, typically celebrated with a cake, candles, and singing.
[33] South Korea was one of the last countries to use a form of East Asian age reckoning for many official purposes.
