In the movie The Game, Michael Douglas plays a wealthy but emotionally remote investment banker who receives an unusual birthday present: his brother signs him up with an “entertainment” company (it already sounds sketchy) that proceeds to entangle him in a multilayered, life-and-death, live-action adventure. The final scene of this psychological thriller has Douglas inadvertently shooting his brother and jumping to his intended death, only to discover it was really all a game meant to shake him out of his callous ways. Some birthday present.
Parents in Lucerne, Switzerland, can do something not as elaborate and with slightly more of a horror-movie vibe: they can hire an evil clown to stalk, harass, and eventually smash a pie in the face of their beloved birthday boys and girls (who, the clown insists, enjoy it). It sounds strange to me; then again, so might the following bizarre birthday customs from around the world.
Canada
Birthday well-wishers ambush boys and girls and grease their victims’ noses with butter, said to make the person too slippery for bad luck to catch hold of. Incidentally, it also works wonders on their pores.
Jamaica
Here, birthday revelers get flour thrown on them, and if they’re especially lucky, they’ll be wetted down first so it sticks. Because nothing says “and many more” like tarring and feathering.
The United Kingdom
In England and Ireland, kids receive “the bumps” on their birthday, which sounds like an STD but is actually a lot more fun. Friends and family lift birthday boys and girls by their arms and legs, raise them into the air, and then plunk them down on the floor, once for each year they’ve lived. Sometimes the plunkers add one bump for good luck. Not too different from the spankings, punches, and earlobe tugs administered in other countries.
Germany
In parts of Germany, single men are supposed to sweep the steps of a church or city hall on their thirtieth birthday. It showcases their apparently overlooked housekeeping skills. They are relieved of the duty only once they receive a kiss from a sympathetic lady. Single women, on the other hand, polish the doorknob. It showcases their apparently overlooked ... never mind.
The United States
Here in America, some parents give their toddlers “smash cakes,” intended solely for the child to dig his or hands into and make as much a mess as possible. It’s as much a gift for the mother cleaning it up as it is for the one-year-old who won’t ever remember it.
China
A child is not officially named until the one-month Moon Yuet birth celebration, at which point he is she is symbolically “locked” to this world with a silver or gold padlock, anklets, or bracelets—not to be confused with the iron ball and chain of the Western marriage celebration.
When it comes to birthday celebrations, “happy birthday to you” means “to each his own.” Cheers to that!
