Hyvää syntymäpäivää!

Life in Hel would like to wish all of its readers a happy birthday!
Regardless if it is your birthday today or not. I mean who knows if I can meet or contact you on that particular day? And maybe in YOUR case the great day has already passed, so let´s get it over with: Happy birthday to all of you!
I should actually like the Finnish way of honoring the very existence of their friends and loved ones. Finns are quite careless about the exact date, sometimes even about the whole thing itself. Since I´m a sucker when it comes to remembering birthdays it would suit me absolutely fine to disguise my disability as an attempt to adjust with the Finns and their habits.

But I can´t. My German genes kick in immediately. My long term memory might be as bad as it is but I still care about congratulating or being congratulated on the exact day. And I hate everytime I forget it. Don´t know if that marks me out as a German (other peoples might be as pedantic as us) but it definetely marks me out as not being a Finn.

Of course birthdays can be a big thing here, too. But that´s for either children or aged citizens. Kids are even the synttärisankari - the birthday hero! Then they must get weaned from this affection like from mother´s milk and by the time their 50th or 60th anniversary is celebrated they don´t even think it´s such a big deal anymore.

Just recently a Finnish friend of mine invited me to his birhday party on a Friday. When I asked him if this was his actual birthday he said: "No, that will be next week´s Wednesday. And the weekend after that I´m out of town so I will celebrate already this Friday." I´m already accustomed to this habit for a considerable time now but an unknowing German brain would read out of this information Syntax error!

To celebrate (days, hours, minutes, seconds) before your birthday is unthinkable for a German mind. We get spooked out and superstitious because - don´t you know? This brings bad luck! If someone suggest doing that to us we have to close our eyes and bite our lips not to scream:
"Witch, witch! Burn the evil one! Burn, burn!"

Back in Germany me and my girl once went to one of these parties where you celebrate "into" the birthday. That is a common habit over there: If your birthday is on - let´s say - a Sunday, you have your party on Saturday and EXACTLY at midnight the music is turned off, everybody goes ape and screams "Häääbbie Böörsdee tuu juu, häääbbie böörsdee tuu juu...!" Then you get your presents and you can open them. But this all has to happen after midnight and not a second before - it wouldn´t be your birthday yet, you see? This system luckily doesn´t take your actual time of birth in account, nobody would wait until...eehm, e.g. 04.37 or 23.41 or whenever you were born.
We´re not that mad. But it seems that the right timing is crucial on a German birthday party!

Obviously I hadn´t briefed my girlfriend about our tribal rites. When we went to the party and rang the bell, the birthday boy (40something) opened the door and my better half said: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" with a big smile on her face. The reply came muttured and without a smile: "Well, actually it´s tomorrow..." I felt bad because it would have been my responsibility to tell her that you can only congratulate after midnight. But how was I supposed to know that she didn´t know? We had just encountered a cultural difference, not for the first and not for the last time.

I have to admit that sometimes I feel a bit stupid about clinging to this unwritten birthday rule myself but at the same time I like it. What can I do, I am German and it´s in my system! Maybe here the old prejudice applies that Germans are always on time - Dienst ist Dienst und Schnaps ist Schnaps. Hhmm, I dunno...maybe. About this I can only say the following: I have played in bands where we had to tell certain members that we would rehearse half an hour earlier. If we showed up at the original time we would arrive with them around the same time at the room because these certain members would always be half an hour late, no matter what. Pathetic, but that system really worked!

To wrap up this post I hereby proclaim that I don´t intend at all to kiss my stupid habit goodbye! We can party but I congratulate when it´s due!
Hugh!

SONG FOR THE DAY:

The Smiths - Unhappy Birthday