Although research on the exact origin of birthdays and birthday cakes remains inconclusive, there is enough of a consensus to piece together an approximate history. Perhaps someday a Birthdayologist will come along to set the record completely straight, but until then, we’ve compiled this short list of historians’ best hypotheses on the evolution of birthday celebrations and the delicious cakes that so often accompany them.
Here are seven of the major developments throughout history that have led to you being able to do this once a year.
1. Egyptians started the party.
When pharaohs were crowned in ancient Egypt they were considered to have transformed into gods. This divine promotion made their coronation date much more important than their birth into the world. Scholars have pointed to the Bible’s reference of a Pharaoh’s birthday as the earliest known mention of a birthday celebration (around 3,000 B.C.E.), but Egyptologist Dr. James Hoffmeier believes this is referencing the subject’s coronation date, since that would have been the Pharaoh’s “birth” as a god.
2. Greeks added candles to cakes.
3. Ancient Romans were the first to celebrate birthdays for the common man (but just the men).
4. Christians initially considered birthdays to be a pagan ritual.
5. Contemporary birthday cakes were invented by German bakers.
6. The Industrial Revolution brought delicious cakes to the masses.
7. “The Birthday Song” was a remix, kind of.
In 1893, Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill wrote a song they called, “Good Morning To All,” which was intended to be sung by students before classes began. The song eventually caught on across America, giving rise to a number of variations. Robert Coleman eventually published a songbook in 1924, adding a few extra lyrics that would quickly come to overshadow the original lines. The new rendition became the version we now all know, “Happy Birthday To You.”
Source: Huffington
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