Birthday celebrations figure in several of my novels, including my current work-in-progress. But I’ve never posted about how people actually celebrated birthdays in the 19th century. I decided some research was in order.
But most families who had a lot of children could not afford to celebrate everyone’s birthday. So in 1860s Oregon, farming families like my characters probably did not have the large neighborhood parties that I describe in my books.
According to a recent article in the Atlantic, middle-class Americans didn’t start celebrating their birthdays until the mid-19th century—right about the time my novels take place. Royalty and national heroes around the globe had their birthdays recognized throughout the ages. And some families celebrated their children’s birthdays as far back as medieval times.
One fascinating point made in the Atlantic article is that recognition of birthdays came along with the more accurate sense of the passing of time. As clocks became more prevalent, and more important because of railroad schedules, people began to track time more closely. The phrases “on time,” “ahead of time,” and “behind time” came into usage. With an increased sense of the passage of time came a recognition of various milestones, such as birthdays.
This meshes with the reason I put so many birthdays into my novels. Birthday celebrations are an opportunity to show the aging of my characters and the passing of weeks and months in my story. In addition, the parties provide a reason for the characters to meet other than at church services, and that means I can tell the story through dialogue between the characters, which is more fun to write than strict narration of the events.
Once the recognition of birthdays became part of American culture, many of the traditions we have today took hold. Birthday cakes might actually have begun in Roman times, but they became prevalent in the U.S. in the mid-19th century. Candles and gifts were frequent parts of these birthday celebrations as well, though there weren’t many gifts and they tended to be practical in nature. (A new dress, for example.)
Mass-produced birthday cards didn’t come about until the late-19th century. And the “Happy Birthday to You” song wasn’t written until 1893 and first appeared in print in 1912. I don’t have my characters singing to the birthday celebrant—eating is more the point of the gathering.
In my family, my mother often celebrated not only our birthdays but our half-birthdays. She would make a half cake for the half-birthdays (easy enough to make one layer and pile half of it on top of the other half). I don’t recall any half presents, however.
What did your family do to celebrate birthdays?
