A hundred years ago, I’m reliably told, the average household didn’t bother with the day you were born. Silly parties were reserved for the day you first read the first letters of the alphabet, when you started menstruating, and so on. But then soon afterwards we embraced the birthday with such passion that we now try to outdo everyone else on this side of the universe.  Particularly when we reach numbers with zeros in them, which we moronically think are more significant than turning 43 or 59.

After getting left out of the guest lists of several worthies trying to outdo each other celebrating their big four-ohs and five-ohs, but of course being forced to see the pictures on social media, it’s time to take a long and vicious look at these… er… events, because they seem to be getting scarier by the passing decade.

Scary celebration type #1

Let’s begin with a segue to the past: twenty years ago, a svelte birthday girl celebrated her 30^th with new and handsome boyfriend and a few friends. Just a couple of pictures of the dinner at home remain. Twenty years later, she’s morphed into an overdressed, overweight, overexposed deep sea creature shoved into her teenage daughter’s outfit, cutting a gigantic cake lit with 50 sparklers and feeding chunks of it to her overdressed, overweight, over successful husband, her children, her motherfatherbrothersisterrandomcousin, and a motley mass of guests pretending to be friends in the hired hall dancing and posing in twos and threes for the hired paparazzo, a hundred pictures littering social media even before the thing finishes.

Scary celebration #2

#1 is actually not the scariest type of party. There’s another one, when a 50^th is celebrated en mass, and all surviving people who sat in the same row of classrooms 45 years ago come down from all expatriate corners of the world not just for one but a whole bloody series of parties. Yes, the rich, the poor, the widowed, the divorced, the learned, the stupid, the corrupt, the bankrupt, the cheated, the beated, they all swoop down like a murder of crows for a fortnight-long celebration where MULTIPLE cakes are cut in multiple posh locations and enough candles to keep the power grid going for a couple of days are blown out. You better sort out your outfits, mesdames, of evening wear, beach wear, day-trip wear and high-tea wear, because there’s hardly any time to change from one merry celebration to another. A wonderful, frenetic time to renew old friendships and grudges, take sneak peeks at the state of other people’s wrinkles, sags, nips and tucks, and to rekindle fond memories of all the hormonal teenage ups and downs that other people would actually like to forget about.

Scary celebration # 3

Equally, or perhaps even more scary is the third and last kind, of those who have, with the passage of time, discovered their religious side. A very scary type, the spiritual birthday boy. Of course, not too spiritual to avoid making a big deal of the big-O day or to revel in the narcissism of it, but enough of a killjoy to ruin any opportunity for fun by turning it into a frightfully dull, totally religious ceremony, which, if you’re lucky enough to be invited, will cost you the same effort in obtaining appropriately religious clothing and religious-themed gifts. The sermon will be as loud as dance music, the almsgiving food as sumptuous. No different will be the desire to show numbers (see how popular I am!) social position (see what a leading religious institution I’m having this in!) and to record and display (can’t wait till I stop levitating to post the pictures on fb!).

With all this hooha to emulate, going back to the past never looked better. At least when you get your first period, you only have to suffer through one awful party — it’s not turned into some ghastly annual event. If you look a fright (you will), you can always blame your relatives’ taste in jewellery and your mother’s taste in pink dresses.