Isn't it interesting how different people celebrate different things? For instance - I've never really celebrated birthdays that much. Normally I'll get a few cards and so on, presents from the folks and so on. Sometimes, I'll get some cash and a few close friends and go to the pub, but more often than not I just stay at home and watch TV. It's just another day really for me, just one that's made a bit more fun in the morning with the cards and presents. I certainly can't remember the last time I had a birthday party, as opposed to a few drinks, but it was certainly when I was still at Junior School. And even then, probably not many people turned up because my birthday is usually in August, and everyone's abroad in the sun. I'm not averse to celebrating birthdays if other people are celebrating theirs, but when it comes to my own, I can rarely be arsed - I save up my celebrating for Christmas. Which is Jesus' birthday, and I don't even believe in him [no offence to any Christians, but I see Jesus as a historically real equivalent to Santa].
It's how I was brought up really; you make a thing of birthdays when you're children obviously, but at a certain age you just grow out of them. And the same seems to be true with my friends. Mine either don't really do much, or have a low-key little gathering, but we save our big get-togethers for stag nights and weddings at the moment. Perhaps the fact that my friends are in several different cities throughout the UK makes arranging birthday parties more trouble then they're actually worth. Who cares?
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| 1: Right |
Turns out that the answer to that question is 'My Girlfriend'. My girlfriend and her family are very different. They have, for instance, a birthday hat, that the birthday boy/girl wears when 'Happy Birthday' is sung, and tend to go out for meals and play games and everything... For her birthday party last year, over 50 people went. I don't even know 50 people. Basically, there's a sense of tradition and celebratory rituals there that I've never really come into contact with before. Last year I got her birthday completely wrong by not getting a card and buying a pretty rubbish present, which showed a birthday competency equalled only by the most puritan of corpses. This year, I fared a little bit better, by getting a nice card (although it didn't have a poem inside, which I think lost me points) and nice presents; but I fell down on the evening arrangements, which was going to meet a friend of mine in a pub and then moving on to catch up with some friends who had just had a baby. I don't think she had this in mind as being a big birthday blow-out, which is fair enough - in retrospect, I can see how watching someone clean piccalilli out of a newborn's nappy might not be the way some people imagine spending their birthday. My mistake was to think that because I would be happy to spend my birthday that way, she would be too.
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| 2: Wrong |
It has made me think how interesting it is the way different families celebrate different things, and of course how friends celebrate it too. As I said earlier, my sister and I stopped having birthday parties from teenhood. And the first time I went out drinking for New Year's Eve was 2 years ago - until then it was Jools Holland and some fizzy wine, call from the impenetrable Scottish relatives and then tucked up in bed before 12.30. But we've always made a massive deal out of Christmas, with more food than you could eat in a week, booze aplenty and present opening sessions that take forever. I guess you could say that my family binge celebrate, saving everything up for one day of the year, whereas my girlfriend's family celebrate things on a semi-regular basis throughout the year. Neither way is righter or wronger than the other, but what it does show is that there is no standard way of celebrating anything. Each family in the world has a different way of showing love and affection and at different times of year.
As I got older, most people I know including myself tended to go out and having a hedonistic night whenever they could afford it, with any old excuse to wake up feeling rough the next day. And so if there were birthday celebrations, they would just be the same as 'New Job' celebrations, or 'Passed Driving Test' celebrations or 'It's The End Of The Week' celebrations; no better or worse. Now that most people I know (including myself) are almost permanently broke, and sometimes full of baby, hedonistic benders are on the whole 'out' and quiet catch-ups over cups of tea are 'in'. But everyone still has a great time, which I find heartening, because it means that it's always been about the personalities, not the social context. Once again though, my girlfriend's circle of friends make a bigger deal out of birthdays, and there is more sense of occasion, than just going out and getting pissed again.
The point is that I think it's a great thing that families celebrate things in different ways as long as everyone's happy, but I'm learning that it's fairly important to learn how different people celebrate things when you start sharing your life with them, especially when you've spent a large-ish part of your life being a feckless bachelor happy enough with an 1/8th and a Doctor Who box set. It can be a bit of a culture shock, and just as when in Rome you should do as the Romans do, you have to accept that people are different, and on birthdays you're expected to give them the celebration they're used to, not the one you'd be happy with, because it's their birthday and therefore for one day at least, rule!
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I expect my girlfriend will get at least a bottle of sparkling wine next year...
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