Happy Birthday
I write these words on my birthday. Chances are, that sentence either made you gasp and think ’but it’s your birthday! One must be showered with gifts and loveliness all birthday long with nothing betwixt the joy but other forms of joy!’ or it made you think ’big deal, sunshine’.
Some people seem to think that because it’s their birthday, the drudgery of adult life must be held in suspension for 24 hours. It’s as though they have a day in lieu. A day in lieu of being a human. Washing your cup in the office kitchen after that cup of tea? Not on your birthday! Good heavens! You’re today’s golden child, a glowing bubble of untouchable self-indulgence. A crowned prince, held aloft by a magic decree.
To others, birthdays are a source of repeated disappointment, downright irritation, or complete misery. It’s just a day in the world, these people might say. Or it has bad memories. Or it makes them feel funny that all day people switch their entire demeanour off at the wall when they find out it’s your birthday and when they turn it back on again it’s like a Christmas tree with flickering lights and suddenly Dave from accounts is singing to you in the staff meeting.
My own position on birthdays hovers between the two extremes. I believe I have shared my proposed overhaul of the birthday system here before: that we replace the compulsory joy and uncomfortable attention of one’s own birthday with something called a reverse-birthday wherein you give people cake and presents on the day you were born. That way, nobody is forgotten, and you receive presents from people who love you all year round. Thinking about it today, though, I realised that what we all want to love about birthdays is that they’re a day to celebrate someone. That’s when I thought of something even better than a reverse birthday.
Public Service Announcement: from this day forth, on days with no significance at all and at the behest of whomever shall decide, there shall be, for the benefit of those so deserving, secret celebration days. These days may be in addition to birthdays, may provide substitutions for birthdays, and shall not be limited to one per year.
Say you’ve got a friend called Maz. You love Maz but Maz is birthday-resistant. Never is Maz going to enjoy a birthday, not entirely. Just knowing it’s supposed to be enjoyed because it’s a birthday will ruin even the best parts of a birthday for Maz. A Secret Celebration Day, though, takes all that pressure right off. Maz, you see, knows nothing about it - but whatever you do, don’t think of it as a surprise birthday. No, please no, not for the likes of Maz. In fact, the less Maz cottons on to this day being different from any other day, the better you’re doing it. All you need to do is pepper the day with the Maz-affirming. Maz gets a chai upon arrival to work. Maz is dragged into a bookshop or smiling at a text message or handed a cupcake. Maybe Maz gets a present. ‘What’s this for?’ Maz might ask suspiciously. Don’t say it’s for Maz’s birthday, because it isn’t. Say instead, ‘I saw it and I thought of you’, which is definitely true.
Maybe you recruit other people into Secret Celebration Day. Another workmate knows the drill, or a bestie. Maybe your friends don’t dislike birthdays and all of this is moot. Except it isn’t, really, because everyone needs to be celebrated for their existence. To merely exist is to have beaten the odds significantly.
What I loved about my birthday today was how many of my friends and old work pals and cousins and random people who saw it on Facebook texted me something out of the blue. Sometimes, after I’d texted them back, they’d crack a joke and we’d be off again, in an exchange that had laid dormant for months in some cases. It wakes you up out of the every day, doesn’t it, when you suddenly have people coming at you from everywhere.
All these things I loved abut my day today? The good food and the good friends and the messages? I didn’t enjoy them because they made me feel like a crown prince in a bubble. In fact, maybe the birthday attention from excellent people burst whatever bubble I usually hover about in. So happy reverse birthday everybody. May you find yourself in a bookshop holding a cupcake, if only metaphorically.
This was from Ed 744 of The Big Issue, printed last year (2025). Please buy from your local vendor!