I remember reading an interview with an avuncular, rather jolly person - an author if I remember correctly. He had quite a few Godchildren (I think he was gay) and admitted he had no intention of keeping up with all their different birthdays. Instead he decided on one day, the same every year, in which he would treat and spoil them. The same day for all of them I mean. It was his Godchildrens' Day. He said they loved it, because it was like an extra birthday.

Good for him, I say. One less card on your birthday as a child doesn't matter - you get plenty. An extra day of being special and treated is worth far more. However I will admit - as an adult - one more card on my birthday makes my year ;)

We too liked that sort of idea.
When we adopted our 3rd daughter her birthday was Jan 3rd but she came to live with us in March.
So to avoid the too-close-to-Xmas business, we started celebrating "Coming Home Day" on March 3rd.

This also meant that explaining the whole adoption business to our kids and the neighborhood was mandatory from the beginning,
and solved a lot of other sorts of problems.

And we still celebrate March 3rd even tho she is 40+ yrs old now with 2 kids of her own.

We have an accidental birthday merge in our family. My mother's b-day is Jan 3rd (but she is not Lamplighter's daughter, I'm pretty sure!) and mine is Jan 4th. And I'm a twin. So all three of us celebrated on the same day with the same cake, when we celebrated at all. Yep, that "too-close-to-Xmas business" thing was an issue for us, too.

Any person born within 7 days of December 25th should be entitled to nominate a different day as their birthday.

Happy belated birthday!

I agree completely.

Fresh, one of my old roommates used to do this for fun three or four times a year for a couple years. When it comes to birthdays, people are going to remember if someone emphasize them (excluding people that are very good at remembering dates). If you throw a very large, and fun, birthday party every year and constantly talk about it, people will remember your birthday. If the only mention of your birthday to someone is a facebook reminder once a year, no one will remember it.

Also I slightly disagree with the point of your experiment. I don't see how remembering someone's birthday is a sign that you really "know" a person. Birthdays are nothing more than an symbolic day where people can feel special for one day a year. Not saying that it isn't important to people or that you can't make someone feel good about themselves if you remember it, but birthdays are very low on the list of information I need to know before I really feel I "know" a person.

To me, really "knowing" a person means that you know a topic that people feel emotionally attached too. That topic that makes someone's eyes light up when they are explaining it. Whether it is someone's job, school, girl/boyfriend, parents, kids, pet, etc, try to find this topic and remember to bring it up whenever you see this person (unless you see this person a lot, then every once in a while will suffice). This is the real person behind the web page.

I'd extend that out to two weeks on either side. At least.


Incidentally, there are a LOT of crazy people whose birthdays fall very close to major holidays.

That's just because there are so many major holidays.


And so many crazy people.