A song written for a classroom
The tune of Happy Birthday was written in the 1890s by two sisters from Kentucky, Mildred and Patty Hill, one a composer and the other a kindergarten teacher. They wrote it as Good Morning to All, a greeting for children to sing at the start of the school day. Somewhere along the way people began SINGING new words to it at birthday parties.
For much of the twentieth century a music company claimed to own the copyright, and it collected millions of dollars in fees from films and television shows that used the song. So characters in old films often sing something else at birthday parties. In 2015 a judge ruled that the company's claim was not valid, and the song is now free for anyone to use.
Candles, wishes and a candle to grow on
Birthday CAKE with CANDLES can be traced to eighteenth-century Germany, where children celebrated a Kinderfest. A cake was lit with one candle for each year of the child's life, plus one more for the year to come, and the candles were kept burning all day. Blowing them out in one breath to make a WISH is a later addition. Some people say the tradition goes back to ancient Greek cakes for the moon goddess Artemis, but the evidence is thin.
Birthday food changes around the world. In China, long noodles are eaten for a long life, and they should not be cut. In South Korea, people eat a seaweed soup on their birthday, the same soup mothers eat after giving birth, as a way of remembering their own mothers.
You probably share a birthday
Put just twenty-three people in a room and there is a better than even chance that two of them share a birthday. It sounds impossible, since there are 365 days to choose from, but with twenty-three people there are 253 different pairs, and each pair is another chance of a match. With seventy people it is almost certain. Mathematicians call it the birthday problem, and our numbers page covers some simpler counting.
Birthdays are not spread evenly. In both Britain and the United States, late September is the busiest time of year for them, and Christmas Day and New Year's Day are among the quietest, partly because fewer births are planned then. The rarest birthday of all is 29 February. People born on it, sometimes called leaplings, only see their real birthday once every four years. British kings and queens have two birthdays: their real one and an official one in June, when the weather is better for the Trooping the Colour parade, a custom that goes back to the 1700s.
Piñatas and party bags
The PINATA probably reached Europe from China, where paper figures were filled with seeds, and spread through Italy and Spain before Spanish missionaries took it to Mexico. Mexican children still smash one at Christmas and at birthday parties, blindfolded and swinging a stick while everyone sings.
The rest of the PARTY is familiar everywhere: BALLOONS, PRESENTS and GIFTS, a CARD, FROSTING or ICING with SPRINKLES, STREAMERS and CONFETTI, paper HATS, GAMES with FRIENDS, a SURPRISE, and a GOODY BAG to take home after they CELEBRATE the BIRTHDAY.