Ask HN: How do you celebrate your birthday? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you celebrate your birthday?

24 pointsfrozencell44 comments

Living in Europe, I always thought my birthday is a special day but turns out everybody close to me is not especially nicer they just have the habit to tell ‘happy birthday’ and offer some gift sometimes.

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I don't celebrate it, and I don't want anything special to happen. I tend to get somewhat melancholic about this token day, marking another year of life has gone, an entire year less left. I find that I get more so if celebrating it and left tired in the evening.. So I just prefer to ignore it and try not to think about it.

same here.

I tend to mope around a bit while everyone around me tries to be nice. It makes me feel immature, but whatever; I don't think a single day of immaturity is going to bother anything. It feels somehow cathartic.

My birthday is in a few hours. And I just feel the same, I just get melancholic.

I just don’t like celebrating my birthday but as my wife told me; a birthday is not just about me. It’s about our kid and other people wanting to celebrate. So do it for them.

Now we have the arrangement that I get the first few hours of the day to enjoy a cigar and wine and mope a bit.

Afterwards just positive attitude :)

I used not to care too much, but then life hammered home the lesson that it can be very short.

So now I look at it differently: birthday or christmas or other such days are an excuse to have some kind of gettogether. Take family, friends, someone you've not seen for a while, ... and go out, eat , ... The reason is not important, the activity is not important, but seeing each other again is.

This means my birthday is not about me, it's just an excuse. Nobody should waste money bringing presents or saying congratulations or whatever.

When you're a child, birthdays are important because this is how you grow up. As a young adult, it's important for your social life. As a mid-life adult, it's depressing, because it's one more year closer to death...my birthday is now a source of anxiety, so I just don't celebrate it. But still happy to receive a present, which never happens anymore, sadly!

I will be happy to give you a video call and celebrate with you your next birthday. You can send me your birthday via my email (me at adonese dot sd)

Last year we were holidaying in Drakensberg (mountaneous area in South Africa) and for my birthday I've decided to run the "Big 5" hike which involves climbing five hills in the area (it's at Cavern). About 20k with ~2000m elevation gain. Took me 4 hours and I was pretty much dead at the end, but the best birthday gift I gave myself, ever!

Highly recommend this style of celebration. My partner and I have made a habit of some form of interesting travel for major birthdays---Everest (just base camp), Svalbard, caving in NZ, etc. Other years just a local trek or hillclimb.

It doesn't need to be expensive (the above had high flight costs, but the remainder was below sustenance spend if we were at home). The goal is to do something well removed from normal daily experience as it creates a nice memory anchor for that point in time.

I take a day off to avoid the akward feeling of having my co-workers singing "happy birthday" to me.

Besides that I don't really celebrate it. I enjoy celebrating achievements, like some success at work or a big milestone in my side project. Surviving yet another year on earth is not really an achievement (I mean, I've done it more than 30 times already), but maybe I'll start treating it as an achievement once I turn 80.

For kids, birthdays are a big deal (and I enjoyed mine). As an adult, I’m happy to wish my friends HBD (and to get the same), but the particular angular alignment of the earth and sun doesn’t seem such a big deal otherwise.

I’d rather those close to me act consistently nice rather than having 1 day be noticeably better than the other 364.

I had my birthday 2 days ago. I tried to keep it as lowkey as I could since I always feel strange when people say 'happy birthday'. For what? I agree with the comment that said take any excuse to celebrate things, but it's not like a contributed to something just by being born.

If anything birthdays should be a celebration of our mothers and family, not in the selfish way birthdays are usually constructed. I find it extremely odd when someone congratulates me awkwardly for being born, as some sort of social tax, and I find it even more depressing when more people compliment me seemingly more on my birthday than on meaningful achievements, which usually are swept with a rug with a 'nicely done'. So all in all I just try to skip the whole deal. There's just something not right at the center of it all.

I take the day off. I go for a long walk in the countryside somewhere with my partner. I eat a bunch of food of the sort that I wouldn't usually allow myself to eat, in larger quantities than I would usually allow. I don't worry about being productive or doing anything I don't feel like doing.

>I always thought my birthday is a special day but turns out everybody close to me is not especially nicer..

If you don't have expectations on people and circumstance then you are never disappointed.

The wife and I take the day off on each other’s birthdays and do a small outing together

I'm 30 now, me and my friends still try to come together for birthdays, have dinner, go to a club, etc. Just an excuse for a nice get-together / party. Sometimes we give each other gifts (if we can think of something nice to give).

-- my father refused to celebrate his - mine - or any other birthday for that matter - he used to say he was saving me from disappointment later down the road - that nobody will care or remember when I get old - he was mostly right --

That's a pretty negative attitude to purposefully instill in your child. I pretty much agree with his view on birthdays, but pushing that view to a child is so wrong.

-- wait till you hear his views on pets - haaa - physicist turned psychiatrist - certainly he held a lot of "interesting" views --

I don't celebrate it anymore. I'm more aware that I have been wasting most of my life since who knows when so want to get out. Birthday is not important anymore.

No such thing as 'wasting' life. It doesn't really matter what you do - the core moment-to-moment existence if the same for everyone, what differs is just what you sense moment-to-moment (touch, smell etc., but more importantly also mental impressions like emotional states and various other mental images like memories). In fact, all of existence has always been just here in this moment; this moment is all that has ever been and will ever be. So 'have been wasting most of my life' is just a mental construct, and not a very useful one at that.

I invite friends over and usually celebrate it for a week. Have done so for decades. I don’t want or ask for gifts; don’t want more stuff.

Cake and presents with friends and family. I eat less cake than I did as a kid but I drink a lot more booze.

Same, except no booze. Wine perhaps.

After work I buy myself a one-portion cake or muffin, plant a lit candle into it and wish for something.

If I am working that day, I buy a box of doughnuts to share with my colleagues.

Sometimes I treat myself to a nice meal. Reduced responsibilities for the day, just to make it light and fun.

It's a good excuse to arrange a get-together of some kind. A full table for some board games :)

If it’s a thing for you, then celebrate it. Personally I hate the pressure of gift giving or making a big deal about it and practically beg people to not mention it. Unfortunately there is a social stigma where people feel they have to acknowledge it.

For me, I'll invite as many close friends as possible to a restaurant with cuisine we've never tried before (last time was Ethiopian). It starts off a new year (relative to my birth) with novelty, good food, and warm feelings

I use it as an excuse to get the friends together for dinner and often games after.

I used to feel super awkward about celebrating my own birthday.

For a good while I just avoided celebrating it.

Now I've decided to get pizza and beer, and share it with family. It was short and sweet.

Might switch things up from time to time.

I like to go for a run of length = age-in-years km's :)

That’s gonna be tough when you turn 80…

My extremely fit uncle has kept up a similar tradition (a mountain bike race with length == age-in-years miles), and he just turned 65!

Very cool! Let's hope we can make it to that age in reasonably good shape :)

I have a wife. I don't celebrate.

Are those two things related?

Having a wife indicates age

Not really, many get married in their early 20s , some in 30s, others 40+. But I digress, I understand now.

I like to get lots of friends together then we go out for dinner and drinks.

Happy birthday!

I take the day off each year. A great present to myself. No regrets.

Just a day like any other.

I have a nicer than usual meal and buy myself an expensive toy.

I don't. Don't want to be reminded of aging.

Happy Birthday :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

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