It’s my birthday as I write this. Because I’m filming, I’m leaving the house at 6am every day. Today I got ready with enough volume to wake my wife, so she could wish me a happy birthday. She said it begrudgingly, and I pretended I hadn’t meant to wake her. The merry dance of our marriage continues.
I have always told my family that I don’t want my birthday to be celebrated and that they shouldn’t get me anything, even though if they didn’t I’d probably write a standup routine about it. I enjoy repeatedly telling people not to make a big deal, so I can spend the day feeling like some sort of smug martyr.
Because let’s be clear about this: birthdays are for children. It’s the one day of the year where they get properly spoilt and are the centre of attention, and they get the presents they really, really want. I thoroughly enjoy my children’s birthdays, despite the fact their parties are an apocalyptic mix of hall-booking, Nerf-gun-hiring, refreshment-organising and talking to parents whose names you’ve forgotten. I remember one year speaking to a mum about how tediously motivational personal trainers tend to be, recalling that we’d spoken about it before, and revelling in the fact that I’d remembered. It was at that point that she informed me I’d misremembered and that the reason I might think we had had that conversation was that she was a personal trainer. I spent the rest of the party pretending to supervise the bouncy castle.
So it really pisses me off when adults make a huge deal about their birthday. I understand going out for a drink or a meal, but what I don’t understand is grownups banging on about it for ages in advance, before sending you an invitation to an expensive bar or restaurant so you can spend a load of money celebrating the day that destiny was kind enough to bring them into the world for us all to enjoy.
I also think you should only invite people close to you, people who actually want to take part in your special day and tell you how much you mean to them. Nobody else cares; your birthday invitation just means that they have to figure out what to do about it. Do they come out of a sense of obligation? Do they politely decline and just hope they don’t see you for a bit? Or do they do the very 2019 thing of saying they’re going to come and then just not show up?
The worst birthday offenders are the ones who stretch their celebrations over a week, with a series of meals and drinks for the different sets of people in their lives, all of them posted on social media. You will see a photo of them on a boozy night out, then another at a posh restaurant, then another at the theatre, as if to demonstrate their versatility: “Night number three of birthday week! Here we go again!” At the end of each evening, they have to look suitably humbled when the cake comes out and everyone sings a song about them. It’s this kind of bullshit that means I have now ring-fenced my friendship group and am accepting no more entries. I would even go so far as to say there are one or two I am looking to cut.
I realise this comes across a little bit Grinchy. And the truth is, my wife and kids waited for me to get home and we had a charmingly telegraphed surprise party with just the five of us, and I loved it. If you are an adult and thinking of making a huge deal about your birthday, try to console yourself with the fact that you’re not the kind of narcissist who writes an entire column about it.
