Favorite family birthday traditions

I hate cake. I haven’t had a birthday cake in about nine years. But when I was a kid, we had this musical turntable display. You wound it up, put your cake on top of it and flipped the switch, and it slowly rotated while playing a music-box version of “Happy Birthday.” Since I don’t like cake, I make vegetarian lasagna in a cake pan every year, and we put it on top of the musical turntable with candles in it. I blow out the candles and we celebrate with lasagna!

— Bridget

In my family, the birthday boy or girl takes a picture holding a framed copy of the previous year’s picture. The result is a picture within a picture within a picture…and so on. I’ve done this since my first birthday holding my one-day-old picture, so my most recent photo contains all 17 of the previous photos.

— Bailey

My stepson is Catholic and for many years he would give up sugary treats for Lent. Since his birthday fell during Lent, I would come up with other things to replace cake. One year I decorated a cheese block with squirty cheese to look like a cake and put a candle in it. He loved it.

— Allyson

My family celebrates the “Birthday Bird” tradition. On the morning of the birthday, the birthday kid looks under his or her bed to find the gift that the Birthday Bird has placed there! Then, in the evening before bed, we read Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss (where the Birthday Bird originates).

— Abby

My parents used to send me on a treasure hunt for my birthday presents. I’d wake up to a clue next to my bed, get up, and start looking for the first present. Then that present would have a clue, and so on until the end. The clues usually rhymed, and they got tougher as I got older. Until just a few years ago, my husband continued the tradition for me. I can’t wait to start with our son.

— Kristin

I make my daughter an “ugly cake”: I decorate it myself—and I am terrible at that. But it was done by my hands and with love, so she loves it! *

— Joan
*[Editor’s note: Joan’s daughter, Maggie, verifies that she actually does love this tradition.]

My husband and I have vowed to use our engraved wedding cake knife as our birthday cake cutting knife every year for the rest of our lives—as did the family who gifted us both the knife and the idea. It’s a romantic way to keep our wedding day fresh in our minds.

— Charity

We grew up with a red plate we called the “You Are Special Plate.” It only came out on someone’s birthday. The birthday boy or girl got to choose the cake and eat it off this plate. After dinner we went around the table and said one thing that made the birthday person special to each of us. (From about ages 9 to 21, my brother and I would say to each other, “Well, you’re my brother.”) When my wife joined the family, she got to enjoy the You Are Special Plate, too.

— Nathan

My youngest son decided that since there’s a Christmas Eve and a New Year’s Eve, there should also be a “Birthday Eve.” Every Birthday Eve we make cupcakes, put a candle on each one, blow out the candles and say goodbye to the past year. I ask him what the best thing was about his current age. Then we talk about what he’s looking forward to the most in the next year of his life.

— Anita