What you should know about birthday celebration

The lack of knowing and understanding has prompted the thinking and the writing of this article.  What is “Birth-day Anniversary Celebration”? The answer to this necessary question can be known through analysis.  There are (4) words involved: (1) Birth (2) Day (3) Anniversary and (4) Celebration.  Let us see them accordingly: ‘Birth’ is the process […]

The lack of knowing and understanding has prompted the thinking and the writing of this article.  What is “Birth-day Anniversary Celebration”? The answer to this necessary question can be known through analysis.  There are (4) words involved: (1) Birth (2) Day (3) Anniversary and (4) Celebration.  Let us see them accordingly: ‘Birth’ is the process of being born.  “Day” here means “day and “date” on which a person was born.
Anniversary is a date (not necessarily a day) that is an exact number of years after the date of the person’s birth.  It was an important or special event.  As regards “birth,” the person who is concerned (the celebrant) does not know, he/she was not fully conscious of what happened in and around him or her.  
It was and is still chancy and mysterious and that is why birth is by definition, different from autobiography and biography.  “Celebration” means a special event that people organize in order to show that a day or an event is important by doing something special on it.  It is in this context that we wish the celebrant, any celebrant, a happy birth-day celebration, as the person marks his or her 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years on the planet earth. It could be a meaningful, successful and fulfilled anniversary of one’s birth.  It is about celebrating of birth-day, an unknown birth-day.  
Try to understand what I am writing and so, try to understand me! The substance I am trying to dig out is that individual human beings who celebrate their birth-days are doing so in ignorance, not in error.  In other words, they should not be the ones to organize and celebrate their birthday.  
Parents (if they are alive), siblings, sponsors, guardians and some other persons should be the people to do it in honour of the person whose birthday “they say” it is. Granted that I celebrate my birth-day, I celebrate what I (neonate) do not know, what I was not fully aware of.  How justified am I by celebrating my own birth-day?  At birth I was not well developed, the qualities that make me a human person were not well developed in me (a newborn baby).  
The level of consciousness, the sense of self, the moral sense, and the ability to communicate were beneath those of most family domestic animals like dogs and cats.  Why, in this sense, do I or any person celebrate birthday? Innocent and ignorant, celebrating myself what I do/did not know! How do I know where, when, how and why I was born? “Oh, my mother, father, aunty, uncle, etc. told me”!  How Am I sure, even with oral, written, empirical evidence?  
Even with medical record of birth, the scientific and technological, concrete and seemingly convincing evidence nay, proof?  Why then do people, why then do I celebrate what neither they nor I know, I mean, their birth-day, my birth-day? Justified if someone else marks it in our honour and who would do that, who are expected to celebrate legally or licitly? Who has the legitimacy to organize and celebrate birth-day?
The position and thrust of this apparent piece of wisdom rests on two key principles: self awareness which was limited at birth and parents, particularly mother, in the natural, biological and social context.  This write-up does not attempt to resolve and melt the paradox in the whole matter of birth-day celebration.
 The paradox may be an accidence not a substance.  Yes you celebrate what you do not know but are told.  You have been told about your birth, so you and I celebrate! We are talking of philosophy, not religion, not faith and so, the question of the “Doubting Thomas” has no room here.  It may not be imposed, dragged or smuggled in here.
Should birth-day anniversary be celebrated or not and who by?  That is not the question, not the aim and objective of this write-up.  Remember, I said, it is a gadfly, stimulating and “biting” the reading public to think.
I have tried to put this matter (anything that has weight and occupies space) in a correct and clear perspective.  It stems from insight. It stems from inspiration.  It comes from the product of philosophy.  It is a form and substance of revelation!
Let me conclude this subject matter by presenting an item of common concern.  Reason(s) or purpose for the celebration of Birth-days: people have to acknowledge and appreciate their existence as human beings.  We thank parents and family and society at large which guarantee right to decent living and welfare and providing and enabling conducive environment and condition for authentic, full human life and development of one’s potential and to contribute to the society.
The next purpose is to be grateful to the Supreme Deity from whom all came to be and to whom all would eventually return, a case for further rational discourse.
Rev. Fr. A. Udo, Abuja is the Parish Priest of St. Augustine Catholic Church, Lugbe