Mama’s Question of the Week: Half-Birthdays

This week we are starting a new feature on Mama’s Little Helper, Mama’s Question of the Week.  We’d love to hear everyone’s feedback on each week’s question so please leave a comment!

What do you think of celebrating half-birthdays?

A half-birthday is celebrating a birthday 6 months before or after the actual birthday.  I don’t know the origins of this celebration, but it seems to have been popular with people whose birthdays are near a major holiday, such as Christmas.  It gives the person a chance to celebrate during a less eventful time of year.  It is also a way for a child with a summer birthday to celebrate during the school year with their classmates and teacher.

According to Wikipedia, there are two ways to calculate one’s half-birthday.  The easy way is to shift the birth date by six months, so a May 22 birthday is “half” celebrated on November 22.  This does not work for someone with say an October 31st birthday, since there is no April 31st, although one could simply use May 1st instead.   Another, more precise way to calculate it, is to add exactly 182.5 days to the birthday.

We never celebrated half-birthdays in my family as a child, and I haven’t done so with my son either.  My husband’s birthday is near Christmas, but he never celebrated half-birthdays either.  I did know a family who celebrated monthly birthdays for their first child, having a cake or cupcakes each month on the monthly anniversary date of the birth.  I think that ended once the second child arrived!

I asked a few local moms about this topic and none of them celebrated half-birthdays.  One mom told me about an idea for them that she read about that sounds really fun.  To celebrate the half-birthday, serve half a cake with half a candle.

So do you celebrate half-birthdays for your child or yourself?  What do you think of them? If you do celebrate them, how?  Please comment below!

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