Birthdays are Good for You
Posted on | February 27, 2010 | 2 Comments
“Birthdays are good for you; the more you have, the longer you live.”
As it happens, today’s my birthday, which may or may not have anything to do with a subject that’s been on my mind a lot this week: fictional characters and their birthdays. A more likely reason for my obsession is the fact that I’ve just finished writing a birthday party scene—and worrying a lot over whether or not the birth date “fit” my characters’ personalities.
It’s not the first time I’ve given a character a specific birthday, but it is the first time that the timing of the story dictated the date, rather than the character’s personality. I don’t know about you, but it really bugs me when I’m presented with a character/birthday combo that just doesn’t make any sense. It’s an astrology thing and yes, I know, I’m weird that way. But I can blame it on my own birth aspects—Pisces sun, Aquarius moon, Sagittarius rising (i.e. weird, eccentric, strange and damn but I do love talking about it).
Probably one of the most well known fictional-character-with-a-birthday is Harry Potter. JK Rowling gave him her birthday—July 31. A very Leonine thing to do, in my opinion.
In her book Fast Women, Jennifer Crusie listed birthdays for several of her characters. I thought they fit pretty well. She even gave one of her characters my birthday. Franciscan Desert Rose dishware. An unfortunate fondness for Amaretto laced soy milk and a wish to avoid any kind of unpleasantness that borders on the pathological…yeah, that seemed to fit a little too well.
Moving right along…
Eric Kripke, the creator of the TV show Supernatural gave Dean Winchester the birthday January 24. He gave the same birthday to Jessica (Sam’s girlfriend, I don’t know her last name). Apparently there’s no significance to the date other than it happens to be his wife’s birthday. But, overall, I think Dean seems quite believable as an Aquarius.
In any case, seeing as it’s on my mind, I thought I’d post a little birthday trivia–just for fun.
According to something known as the ‘Birthday Paradox”, if there are twenty-five people in a room, the chance that at least two of them will share a birthday is 50%. However, if you increase the people in the room to sixty, the chances of it occurring increase to 90%.
Here’s another paradox for you. Something like four billion birthday cards are sent each year. The world population is six billion. Supposedly, the average person receives seven birthday cards. If you figure that one out, be sure and let me know!
According to statistics, more people celebrate their birthdays in August than in any other month, followed by the months of July and September. And yet, the most common birth date is October 5. Not really sure how that makes sense either…must be some weird Math-related thing.
However, I’d say the fact that October 5 falls approximately nine months after New Year’s Eve, probably speaks for itself.
Oh, and, by the way, the least common birthday is May 22…which is nine months away from mid-August. Now, that at least makes some sense. I think.
More babies are born on Tuesday than any other day of the week. Sunday is the day with the lowest amount of births. And, not surprisingly, February—the month with the fewest days—is also the month with the fewest birthdays. Well, duh.
The world’s largest birthday cake weighed 128,238 pounds and was covered in 16,209 pounds of icing. No clue what flavor either the cake or the icing was. I’m guessing chocolate.
The Happy Birthday song is copyrighted and brings in approximately two million dollars a year from licensing fees. Nice.
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From our Authors…
February 27th, 2010 @ 5:49 pm
Happy Birthday! I hope you’re having a great day!
February 27th, 2010 @ 10:05 pm
Happy Birthday.
Must be a great day, since it is also my Mom’s birhtday. And aren’t we Pisces great (mine is in 3 days and Dad’s in 18 days)
Leslie Jane