This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in IMAGES, June 23, East Bernard Express, East Bernard, Texas.
Usually, my childhood memories are very vivid, wherein I remember amazing details, — no doubt because childhood was a very happy time for me. However, the one yearly “event” that I remember vaguely with few details is my birthday celebrations. My 88th is coming up on June 26; it’s hard to believe there were 87 before this one!
It was a tradition among most of the kids in Dime Box, where I grew up, to invite your best friends and have a big birthday party given by your parents. I remember parties for other kids to which I was invited, but I don’t remember my own.
I do remember celebrating my birthdays with my parents, maternal grandparents, aunts and uncles, so I have to conclude that we did not do “invite-other-kids” parties. Nor did my parents invite the whole town, which is a birthday tradition in South Africa.
What I do remember about other kids was “recognizing” your birthday at school both officially and unofficially, in the classroom and on the playground.
During class, the teacher would have the whole class sing Happy Birthday to you. On the playground, however, there was the “spanking” tradition, that is, if the other kids could catch you. You ran from everyone until you were caught, at which point you were given the number of spanks corresponding to you age. Plus “one to grow on.”
The spanking tradition was rather widespread throughout the United States; however, in other countries there were unusual versions of counting out the years. I had heard of some of these practices but found more of them listed in Wikipedia.
In Scotland, England, Ireland, and India, instead of spankings, the birthday child gets “bumps” or “dumps.” Those celebrating would grab him or her by the legs and arms and swing him up in the air the number of times equaling his birthday age. I suppose it was called “bumps,” because often the celebrants would bump the celebratee’s bottom on the ground. In Israel, friends would seat the birthday person in a beautifully decorated chair, and then they would lift chair and person up the number of times corresponding with his age. They would then do an extra lift “for the next year.”
No matter what other traditions we or they observed, then or now, there was always the birthday cake! We never observed the popular tradition in Mexico of pushing the person’s face down into the cake. But there was on occasion a problem with blowing out the candles. Putting only one candle on the cake for elderly family members didn’t help. When my father-in-law was in his eighties, he blew out the one candle and unintentionally spit on the whole cake. I’m in my eighties, watch out!
My favorite birthday cake often made by my great Wendish cook mother was a white wedding cake with rich, frothy white icing covered with luscious red cherries. In recent years, my senior citizen diet has called for a delicious, but less exciting, Angel food cake, baked by my wife, who, though not Wendish, is also a great cook.
As my birthday approaches, I am busy thinking up ways to “schmeicheln” my wife into making a Wendish white wedding cake with frothy white icing covered with luscious red cherries . . . and no candles! I hope she will!
-o-
Ray Spitzenberger is a retired Wharton County Junior College teacher, a retired Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor, and author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.