Results: They Say It's Your Birthday!

Celebrate or not, we all have birthdays. And if you do celebrate your birthday, you're in good company. According to a recent poll, 89% of Americans think it is very important to celebrate your birthday. Do you think it is important to celebrate your birthday?

In Canada and the U.S. the most popular way to celebrate your birthday is dinner out or a birthday party, traditionally with a birthday cake. But, around the world, celebrating a birthday looks different. For example, in some countries, such as Bhutan and Vietnam, individual birthdays aren't celebrated and a lot don't know the actual date. In Bhutan, the Bhutanese measure their age in years, and so for administrative purposes, the entire country gets one year older on the 1st of January. This is official and has even caused problems at customs when officers grew suspicious that an entire Bhutanese delegation all had the same birthday. In Vietnam everyone gets a year older on Vietnamese New Year, also known as Tet, which changes annually. So if you want to know when your birthday is the following year, you need to ask someone with next year's calendar. The result is that in January or February, there is a huge party that can last up to a week. Were you aware of either of these two birthday traditions?

For most children, turning seven is a joyous occasion. But for children of the Sambia Tribe of Papua, New Guinea, this is definitely not the case. Boys are taken from their families on their seventh birthdays and ensconced ("imprisoned" might be a more accurate word) in an all-male hut for the next ten years of their life. During this period they engage heavily in nose bleeding, forced vomiting and defecation (by way of sugarcane), and forced semen ingestion (at the hands of adult men) in order to rid themselves of impurities and become men. Do you find this birthday custom interesting or terrifying?

If you're a resident of North Korea, and your birthday happens to fall on July 8th or December 17th, you're out of luck. Said dates are strictly reserved for lamenting Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, who (respectively) died on those days. 100,000 North Koreans therefore celebrate "displaced" birthdays every year, but not until they've spent their actual birthday "patriotically" weeping, wailing, and mourning. There is a way around the problem, though. If you want to, you can go ahead and change your birthday so there's no conflict of interest via an "official provision." Does anyone here celebrate a birthday on either of these two dates?