I'm a big birthday person, I love my birthday more than just about any day of the year. It's my day and I always try to assemble lots of people to celebrate with me. My family always made a big deal out of birthdays when I was young, so I've grown to expect them to be big, special important days. And they are!

So what do you do to make your birthday a big, special, important day?

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

Answers

How timely! My birthday was just last week, so birthday traditions have been on my mind lately.

Special cakes are big in my family - my Mom & Grandma (with whom we live) are both amazing bakers, so they tend to go all-out. As a small child, I had a number of fabulous cakes - a fire-engine cake, several Cinderella cakes (featuring a doll rising out of a dome-shaped cake, decorated to look like a swanky ballgown), and cakes covered with candied flowers. Since I turned 10, my family has traditionally purchased a bombe, which is this insane, dense mousse-filled French confection, as my birthday cake.

We also try to have joint celebrations when geography will permit it - my cousin and Grandma have the same birthday, and my youngest sister & Grandfather have nearly the same birthday.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

Everyone in our family gets together and collectively forget each others b-day. It's quite refreshing.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

I keep to myself. Since as far back as I can remember, something major--and not in a nice way--happened on my birthday. It would always start out a huge family celebration and end with me, at least one parent, my sister, a couple of cousins, and my grandma and aunts--thrown in fore good measure--being pissed off at each other, crying, yelling, or all simultaneously. We're actually quite close. Really. :-) So, for the past 5 glorious years, since graduating from college, I have not been home for my birthday (oh, dear, it just *couldn't* be helped ) and have spent it alone. Doing little things that make me happy--going to a restaurant by myself, spending the day at a bookstore, watching movies all day, getting merrily drunk and reading three books at once. My boyfriend, bless him, is fully supportive of this tradition, even now that we live together. He gets up on the day, makes me breakfast and--depending on what I plan to do--lunch and/or dinner, packs it all up in the fridge and goes out for the day. To allow me to be so selfishly focused on just myself for the day is the best gift he can give me. :-)

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2000

I like to be completey and utterly alone on my birthday. I haven't had any incredibly awful experiences to make this so. It just evolved over time, I guess. I think the first time I was alone on my birthday and immensely enjoyed it was the last time Thanksgiving fell on the same day as it. I managed to avoid all of my family that had surrounded the television to eat a couple of turkeys each and watch 12 hours of football straight. I was at my aunt's house that was right in front of a decent size forest with lots of litte creeks which I would always make paper boats for. I just walked around aimlessly and felt elated for the whole time I was alone. Reveling in my me-ness. And at the time I hadn't even known thah Bruce Lee and Jimi Hendrix had the same birthday as me. Those lucky bastards. Viva La 27th Of November!

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000