When can we stop celebrating birthdays?

Where the passing of time once required an entire weekend set aside for pub crawls and costume parties, the fun has well and truly gone out of it for me as I get older, writes Darren Levin.

I do not care for birthdays.

There should be an age threshold that allows you to opt out of your own birthday.

To opt out of the relentless text messages, phone calls, and Facebook wall posts from your mum’s friends or that otherwise idle ex-classmate that only pops up to share anti-vax propaganda and wish you a happy birthday with cat gifs.

It’d be so nice to opt out of awkward cake situations at the office, too. I don’t like cake — it just doesn’t sit well with me texturally or spiritually — which office administrators either take as a personal insult or a challenge. “Let’s get that office grinch the most nightmarish chocolate mud cake imaginable with a really dense sponge and heaps of icing,” they’ll conspire in the kitchen, sharpening their knives. “And let’s all gather ‘round and light it on fire and sing Happy Birthday to him in a semi-iconic way because anyone that hates cake deserves to be shamed at 2pm on a Monday.”

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I still don’t understand the point of birthdays, but if society insists I celebrate them, shouldn’t it be a day for me and what I like? If that were the case I’d spend each birthday in an isolation booth with no birthday singers and not even a single crumb of cake.

Because somewhere between three kids and being over 30, the idea of celebrating the passing of time became less and less appealing. Funny that. It’s almost as if I don’t want to acknowledge that ever diminishing gap between myself and the grave.

Birthday cake is the torture device of office administrators around the world. Picture: iStock

I’m even torn about celebrating the kids’ birthdays, which sounds like I’m selfish and cheap, but on a far deeper level I don’t think there’s anything worth celebrating about their rapid ascent towards those surly teens years. The worst thing about being a parent is losing versions of your kids along the way. Being conscious of that fact doesn’t allow you to slow down time, but celebrating it seems kind of crass.

Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing the joy on their faces when they’re ripping into presents, forcefully blowing out candles, or throwing a tantrum because you got them the wrong colour bike, but it’s tainted by the realisation that they’ll never be this age again.

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It was my 38th birthday over the weekend, and I celebrated by going out for pizza with the kids at 5.30pm, which coincidentally is the same time they play cribbage and serve up plates of mashed potato and overcooked steak in aged homes.

The rest of the time was spent responding to a year’s worth of social texts in a single day and daydreaming about the sleeve tattoo pattern I was going to get at 40.

When it comes to celebrating birthdays, what’s the big deal? Picture: supplied

Still, 38 was better that 36, the year in which during a charity soccer match I ripped the soles off my runners, tore my meniscus, ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament, and humiliated myself in front of my peers. The moral of the story: never do anything sporty or charitable again.

Back in the day we’d set aside entire weekends for birthdays, planning all-day winery benders, or dress-up parties with “risqué” themes like “pimps and hoes”. We’d spend time thoughtfully shopping for presents that had personal meaning for the recipient and write long, personalised messages that conveyed how much that person meant to us and how proud of them we were for being, well, just amazingly awesome incredible human beings.

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Now I’m lucky to get a $20 kitchen gadget — oddly enough, I really do need that extra fine microplane — and a bunch of toys from the floor wrapped up and re-gifted to me from my kids. If my friends do happen to remember my birthday, it’s a phoned-in Facebook message; a text that reads Halfback Buddy’s! (autocorrect for “happy birthday”); or a cake emoji, which does nothing but enrage and trigger me.

Still, maybe all of this celebrating is designed to remind us not that we’re getting older, but that we’re still here. But for my next birthday the greatest gift would be an opt out button for next year. They’re just not for me.

And please, no more cake.

Darren Levin is a writer, editor and wannabe dad-fluencer based in Melbourne. Find him on Twitter and Instagram.