Why Do We Celebrate Birthdays, Anyway?

Marking the day you were born feels universal, but the birthday party as we know it is a fairly recent invention, stitched together from a handful of much older customs.

The ancient Egyptians are the first on record marking a "birth day" — though it was for pharaohs on their coronation, treated as the day a person became a god. The Greeks are usually credited with the birthday cake: worshippers baked round, moon-shaped cakes for Artemis, goddess of the moon, and lit them with candles to mirror her glow. Blowing them out was thought to carry a wish up to her.

Germany gets credit for turning it into a children's tradition. Kinderfeste, dating back to the Middle Ages, was one of the first customs to celebrate a child's birthday specifically, complete with cake, candles for each year of life, and one extra for good luck.

By the time birthdays reached the wider public, most of the pieces we still use — cake, candles, a wish, a gathering of the people who matter to you — were already in place. What's changed is how easy it's become to reach someone on their day, no matter where they are. A card that shows up exactly when someone's thinking about the year behind them is a small, old idea, delivered in a new way.