A birthday is a day when a person celebrates the anniversary of his or her
birth. Birthdays are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with a gift, party,
or rite of passage. The celebration of a birthday usually is thought to mark how
old a person is, "Happy Sixteenth Birthday", traditionally stopping when death
occurs and only stating that if still alive, they would have been (number of
years) old.
Some contemporary writers ignore anniversary aspect, however, and keep counting
the years since the date of birth of famous people, such as, proclaiming that it
is Shakespeare's "four hundredth birthday" (although he died at the age of
fifty-two) instead of noting that it is the four hundredth anniversary of his
birth. |