Happy Birthday to You!

We all have one - the day that travels with you throughout your life. It’s part of your DNA, your astrology chart, your Myers'-Briggs type, your Enneagram, birthday parties, clowns, favorite dinners, cakes. Oh and yes, of course that magical talking raisin toast man. (I made that up. I just had to figure out how to share the day pareidolia struck with my morning raisin toast.)

I happen to think our Happy Birthday song is lethally boring - especially when sung so slowly, you think you might top yourself, ending all possiblity of future birthdays.

It is thought that the song was written in 1912 (the year my father was born) by Patty Hill, a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky and her sister Mildred, a pianist and composer. The song started life as Good Morning to All and morphed into Happy Birthday thereafter.

Wikipedia says the song’s base lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages, as though that’s marvelous. It’s horrifying. There’s nothing goofier to me than beautiful, melodious foreign languages being stuffed into that tune.

I wonder what all those countries did about birthdays before that??

To alleviate the deadliness of lovely Patty and Mildred’s earnest creation, over the years, I have created videos to entertain and to distract.

Here are a few. Raise a glass to all of us who have birthdays. Which is most of us.

for animated dog:

for kitties in a window in San Francisco:

Strawberry shortcake:

for pasta roller, lemon, sock puppet and trombone:

for anklung:

Years ago, I came across an exception - the glorious Dutch birthday song, Lang zal ze Leven. I made sure to memorize it, dusting it off whenever I meet a Dutchman. Needless to say, it always goes over big. (Raisin man agreed to sing it)

And I’ll close with another exception. When Bill and I were in Paros, Greece (amazing trip- 10 years ago now!), Kristina and Teodora humored me and sang the Greek version of Happy Birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALL

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