Birthday Blues: Whose Fault Is it Anyway?
“It doesn't really happen after you wake up. It actually starts from 12…but then you start counting how many people have called you... And the next day, you wait for someone to call, or something to happen. Then your mood just goes down, you keep waiting and thinking ‘Something will happen’, but it doesn’t happen.”
Kathy*, a postgraduate student in her late 20s, speaks about the dreadful anticipation of her birthday, and I echo her sentiment. The gloomy feeling around or on birthdays is a pervasive cultural phenomenon, also documented by a rise in suicide risk around the big day. For an experience so prevalent yet isolating, what fuels this cruel anticipation?
Paralleling real life, birthday blues are evident in popular culture - from Rachel’s bitter spats on turning 30 in Friends to Kelly Kapoor’s public displays of rage in the Office US, it hurts to have a less-than-perfect birthday.
Kathy speaks of the disappointment of the day, “Technically, it’s just another day…but then, it’s not…because you are the main character that day. (You want to tell people) ‘Do something for me, do something at least.’”
The main character syndrome, popularised on TikTok by the Gen-Zers and Millennials, is when one acts or imagines oneself as a protagonist in a fictional version of their life. For Kathy, unlike many her age (including this author), the syndrome presents a type of American individualism, where one is further removed from society to live as a hyper-realistic, fictionalised version of themselves. For several individuals in pursuit of the happiness reserved for the main character, birthdays act as a mirror to the hard-hitting reality that you may not be one.
It is no surprise that the recognition of birthdays parallels the rise of individualism in Western cultures since the Industrial Revolution. The attention to time and its significance became more important with the process of industrialisation (think: time is money). As we became more conscious of how we passed our time, birthdays became a more prominent cultural rite of passage for all. According to psychologist Dr Quinn-Cirillo, birthdays signify a day when we reflect on our lives and measure our achievements against ‘landmarks’ based on our social position. Landmark birthdays invite reflection on ways to self-optimise and measure our self-performance against social expectations.
When only a certain type of character (read: thin, white, rich, and popular) gets to become the main character in most movies and TV shows, those who do not fall into those categories often end up feeling ‘lesser than’. Social expectations feed into media representation and vice versa, and adverse external factors such as low socio-economic status, play a significant role in determining our self-esteem. Reddit user PM_Me_UR_FLOWERS, shares, “I’ve got a landmark birthday coming up and I’m depressed because I feel like I’ve wasted my life”.
Birthdays are often a fertile ground to make our shortcomings salient and bring about a loss of self-esteem and accompanying shame, the emotion one feels upon loss of self-esteem. As psychologist Gershen Kaufman writes, “Contained in the experience of shame is a piercing awareness of ourselves as fundamentally deficient in some vital way as a human being.” (cite) Shame is experienced when areas in which we are lacking are made apparent, or they reappear, at the forefront of our consciousness.
Birthdays signify the celebration of the individual. The social celebration of birthdays as a day of reflection and potential transcendence recognises the individual as a free, undetermined consciousness, a being-for-itself. According to philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the individual, as a being for itself, can “transcend through free choices any nature that is bestowed upon her, whether by herself or others” (Satre, 1984, 350). When this symbolic freedom of individual freedom is hindered due to limiting situations such as socio-economic status, race, gender, religion, or age, the individual is unable to transcend through free choices. Their internalised gaze of the other, through shame, limits the possibilities of a different life.
In other words, when we reflect on our lives on birthdays and find ourselves in overwhelming circumstances that we cannot surpass, we view ourselves through the scrutinising eyes of others, and that brings the awareness that we are not good enough. This awareness makes birthdays a harbinger of shame.
While the popularity of birthdays has only risen in the last century due to rampant consumerism, there have been some groups that resisted the celebration of birthdays due to their self-centred and materialistic connotations. This resistance is also noted in Islamic cultures. For several Muslim families, birthdays are a symbol of Christian traditions, and thus, are haram (forbidden). In some African cultures, an initiation ceremony instead of birthdays is held for children to learn the laws of the tribe, beliefs, and cultures such as in the Masai tribe where two stages of initiation are spread between ages 13-17. In Jewish religious law (halakha), there is no record of birthdays and historically, most laymen were not aware of their birthdays except the Bar Mitzvah.
As some cultures place different values on birthdays as opposed to contemporary Western cultures, immigrant parents often face pressures of assimilation. In a study done on birthday celebrations in Norway, birthdays as a symbol of belonging meant that minority children were less interwoven in exchanges of birthday parties than majority children. Since birthdays are not a custom for several migrant families, parents shared that they felt birthday parties were foreign and distant and did not celebrate them. For children of immigrant families, this meant that they were automatically excluded from socialising, a concern not understood by immigrant parents. “Is it mandatory to celebrate children’s birthdays?” shares a mother with a Somali background. The study highlights how birthdays symbolise important social codes of belonging in national communities.
As a ritual of belonging, birthday parties are ripe with cultural codes, which are often implicit, and if not understood, can exclude minority children from socialising. Birthdays, and birthday parties, can reveal many economic, social, cultural, and religious differences in Western societies. If migrant families do not adapt to the birthday celebrations, they may not be included in Western cultures, further increasing the experience of shame of being excluded.
Upon reflection on the topic with a friend, he commented, “Birthdays remind people of the love in their lives.” His comment prompted me to consider how the main character syndrome highlights the loneliness of younger generations in rapidly individualising societies. Loneliness can be a highly shameful experience, especially at social events such as birthdays. Coupled with social factors, birthday blues exacerbate the low self-esteem that comes from the feeling that ‘you have wasted your life’.
Despite diverse cultural values, the globalising world of social media grants meaning to birthdays and birthday parties as rituals of belonging. Particularly for immigrant families and those considered ‘others’, compliance with birthday rituals ensures acceptance and assimilation for their children.
Since birthdays carry layers of emotional suffering for many of us, it begs the question – do birthdays need to be re-considered as a symbol of individual and social celebration?
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Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1984 [1956].
“Gershen Kaufman, Shame: The Power of Caring (Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books, 1980), 20”
*Name changed for privacy reasons.
