Birthday cakes. Lighted candles. Singing “Happy Birthday.” Receiving gifts. In almost every culture and nation on Earth, virtually nothing is as universally celebrated as birthdays. But is birthday-keeping biblical? Does God agree with this practice?
Source: Are Birthday Celebrations Christian?
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That is a great article worth reading! It speaks about how the three times birthday celebrations are mentioned in the Bible, they are surrounded by calamity and evil. Pharaoh killed the baker on his birthday; Job lost his sons due to their regular birthday feasting, on the eldest’s birthday; and Herod had John the Baptist beheaded at his birthday celebration.
I have never felt naturally drawn to celebrate birthdays nor weddings. They both seem idolatrous to me, they overtake everything else going on in life and consume those involved, usually causing much stress overall. I joke about how all of my five childrens’ birthday parties were not complete without at least one temper tantrum being thrown, and it was usually a worse day than normal regarding my childrens’ behaviors, no kidding. It’s almost as if we understand at a very young age this is NOT what God wants us to be so focused on–ourselves!
While I have liked celebrating Christmas, I have learned that most of what we do at Christmas is pagan in origin (as the Christmas tree dolled up with ornaments with presents placed under it, as if we are worshiping the pagan goddess ashterah? yikes!), and have taken steps to eliminate these things as much as possible without becoming a legalistic drag in the process.
Thanksgiving is fun because I love to cook for my family and feast on God’s abundance. I also like Halloween, not because of the ghouls and ghosts, but because it is the one time a year when the community turns out as a family and everyone walks around and enjoys the Fall weather saying hello to each other. To think that if we all celebrated the annual feasts God commands us to celebrate in His word we would do this at least three times per year is a thought that should provoke much contemplation about our modern day existence and our lack of fulfillment in it. His most important holiday celebration even involves group camping and feasting for a whole week! How cool is that?
It is difficult to navigate saying, “No, thank you,” to invitations in our day and time because facebook makes it easy to generate electronic invitations for events like birthday parties, showers, and weddings. And often people take it very personally, even if they do not mean to, if you do not attend their celebrations to the extent that they can even consider it a fatalistic blow to a relationship if you are absent, or politely refuse to go. And much time, expense, and even stress is the fate of anyone who does choose to attend, including the planners and recipients!
So either way, it is the antithesis of the original intent: to celebrate something. It is fairly obvious from looking at it this way that it is just not something humans enjoy necessarily, but a ritual we have unconsciously adopted and passed down from our ancient pagan days not even realizing that these things do not usually edify us in Christ. We become affected and guilty of idolatry not unlike how the Israelites became affected by the gentile nations and their pagan practices while living among them.
In the end, God does not want us to expend our time or resources upon celebrating ourselves, only on celebrating Him.
~Selah
~Song of Mary~ 