Project MUSE - Debating the Birthday: Innovation and Resistance in Celebrating Children (original) (raw)

Abstract:

This article briefly assesses existing work on how and when birthdays became popular celebrations in the English-speaking world, arguing that the rise of the event signals important changes in ideas about the individual and about the place of the child. The article then works on the timing of birthdays’ popularization and the reasons for this; it also identifies an implicit debate, in which important objections to birthdays surfaced for several decades. The article’s last section deals with further evidence about the routinization of birthdays, changes in the nature of the event, and recent globalization.

pdf