Not all birthdays are the same. The form of the celebration varies according to the age and culture in which one is educated. For example, in all my childhood and youth I did not celebrate my birthday, the date of which, actually, almost no one knew or remembered. It is said that the best way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once – you will never forget it again in your life. Maybe that’s why it’s customary in Japan to celebrate every birthday on the first day of the new year. Perhaps this is why in Christian Europe it was preferred to celebrate the name day, or day of the Saint whose name we received.
In fact, it is easier to remember the date of a Saint, whose name many people bear, especially in families where the names are often repeated, than a hundred birthdays. For example, in my paternal family there are names that are repeated: Francesco/a (my grandfather, me, my granddaughter); Lucia (my paternal grandmother, my sister and my daughter); John, in his variants of Giovanni, Gianni, Giancarlo, Gianpaolo, Gianluca, Gianfilippo. This makes it easier to remember the name day, but introduces discrimination and, in some cases, confusion.
Let me explain: everyone knows (or knew, from the Bristol calendars) that the Saint of Assisi is celebrated on October 4th, St. Anthony on June 13th, St. John on June 24th, St. Teresa on October 14th, etc.), but I doubt that the date of St. Protasius (June 19th) is as well known, so the names of popular saints are more likely to be celebrated than those of lesser-known saints. Moreover, there is more than one Francis in the calendar: de Paula, Regis, Caracciolo, de Sales, Xavier, Solano, etc., and the choice of the saint is often a matter of particular devotion. Searching on Google, you will find that there are more than 70 “Saint Francis” (https://www.santopedia.com/buscar?q=san+francisco ).
I said that not all birthdays are the same: there are characteristics of children’s celebration that are then lost over time, such as decorations (toys, “piñatas”, clowns, cake, baskets), but also the perspective is different (people use looking at what the future will hold for the child more than the past and what has been sown, as in the case of the elderly). A challenge is gifts to the elderly: liquor, when they can no longer drink; books, when they are reading less and less, chocolates, to share with guests, or an alpaca scarf to add to the collection.
On the same day as my birthday, the first granddaughter of a couple of dear colleagues was born in Madrid, but only in a year Vera and I will be able to celebrate our birthdays together. However, as mentioned, for a Japanese Vera is already in her first year of life (2024) and on January 1, 2025 she will have two.
Since babies are born in hospitals, there are reliable statistics on the month, day and time of births and, therefore, birthdays. It turns out that the month with the highest number of births is September (will it have anything to do with Carnival?); the time of day is early in the morning (between 4 and 7 a.m.) and it is true that babies are reluctant to be born on weekends and holidays).
Curiously, the year 2000 recorded a peak of births that has been explained by psychology in the sense that humanity has “defended” itself from millennial preaching, strengthening its survival. Similarly, peak births are usually recorded nine months after long nighttime blackouts, although for other reasons. Finally, science has refuted with abundant statistical evidence the false belief of a correlation between the full (or new) moon and the frequency of births. Neither the Moon nor its satellite interferes with the distribution of birthdays.