The great debate
Eleanor robertson and deirdre fidge weigh up the pros and cons of the birthday song.
IT’S GLORIFIED TORTURE BY DEIRDRE FIDGE
How would you feel if I asked you to sing at someone? No, not for money. No, you don’t get to choose the tune. Yes, it will be uncomfortable for them, you, and everyone involved. I’m not a social scientist, but I do have a clipboard and a hunch that most people wouldn’t respond enthusiastically if asked that question. And yet, every birthday, that’s what we do. Friends, family, colleagues we barely know – even strangers in public! – inspire this bizarre behaviour.
It only takes one singer to get a crowd going, and even if that person is the only one invested, we all respond like Pavlov’s dogs. A dusty switch inside our brain flicks on, our eyes go black and the song drones out of our gaping maws. Absolutely heinous stuff.
Lots of people hate being sung to – I am one of them. The lack of direction is a key element here. Unlike other traditions, there’s no customary, agreed-upon response for when people are warbling “Happy Birthday” at you. Do we smile? Look people directly in the eye? Should we avoid eye contact altogether? Gaze longingly at an open window?
Once at a workplace, I was surprised with a cake (hooray!) and song (boo!), and at one point I met someone’s gaze mid-tune. It was a colleague I didn’t know very well, who carried himself like a small mouse in ill-fitting trousers. His reaction was a look of utter shame, which I instantly felt as well. Why must we put each other through this public humiliation?
Increasing the awkwardness is the fact that people never agree on a name to sing beforehand – many folks have nicknames, so it’s not uncommon to hear a variety of discordant monikers squawk out of the celebrators all at once. What follows is a quick head-whip among singers as they chuckle lightly and realise they’ve voluntarily assembled the MOST HORRIBLE CHOIR OF ALL TIME. No particular key tends to be specified, either, meaning godawful, inharmonious bellows fill the air. How is that a gift?!
The song itself is bad. Very bad. Research confirms this (real research, not me with a clipboard): a study at the University of Buffalo found the sudden octave leap makes it a difficult song for most people to sing. Renowned Hungarian composer Ivån Fischer confirmed the melody isn’t pleasant to the ear (you can look up his version, which I still wouldn’t recommend, though it is better). And in a POST-COVID world, we know singing spreads disgusting germs! How much more evidence do you need?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m no buzzkill. Birthdays are actually one of my favourite things in the world. I love celebrating: giving gifts, writing cards, wearing birthday hats (you’re never too old), the whole lot. Making people feel special is one of the purest forms of joy. And singing a generic song entirely because of tradition is the worst possible way to achieve it.
If you must sing, why not a jazzy birthday ditty you wrote yourself? Does their name rhyme with a humorous bodily function, perhaps? A completely improvised tap dance is far more likely to impress than an off-key jingle. Maybe making people feel uncomfortable is part of the fun for you – I get that. It’s a popular love language to embarrass people you care about, but there are more effective and palatable ways of doing it that don’t involve this horrible song. Get creative.
The best option, we must agree, is to scrap the “Happy Birthday” song entirely. There is no need for it to exist at all. It’s too short to be considered a hymn, too flat to dance to, and far too uncomfortable for all involved. And most crucially, singing only wastes precious seconds that could be spent eating cake.
IT’S A GODDAMN JOY BY ELEANOR ROBERTSON
Recently, my friend’s girlfriend revealed to me that she’d been at his family birthday dinner a few weeks earlier, and had been scandalised when nobody in the family sang my friend “Happy Birthday”. She said this with a kind of disgusted expression, as though she’d witnessed my friend’s family clipping their toenails at the table, or picking their noses and eating it. I turned to my friend, surprised, for confirmation. “Are you serious?” I asked. “Your family really doesn’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’?” He screwed up his face and replied, “Nah… weird shit.”
His girlfriend and I shared a glance with mutually raised eyebrows. No “Happy Birthday”? What are we, Jehovah’s Witnesses? You gotta sing “Happy Birthday”! I’ll carve out exceptions here and there, like you don’t have to sing it if there are fewer than three people gathered. You don’t have to sing it if the birthday person is stricken with measles, tapeworm, roundworm, giardiasis, phantom limb syndrome, or birthday depression. And it’s optional if, for instance, you’re living in the middle of a global pandemic of a respiratory illness that spreads easily from person to person if they’re all flapping their disgusting, wet mouths in a tight circle over the top of a cake they’re all going to eat. Coronavirus? Don’t know her, sorry!
If anything, we should focus more on singing to people and less on gift-giving, which can be emotionally fraught and environmentally disastrous. Usually, the gifting has some element of repressed status jockeying between various competing factions of your friends and family – plus, you’ll probably receive between three and 12 pieces of plastic crap you’re going to yeet into the bin as soon as the guests leave. The singing and the cake have a lower carbon footprint, and they bring people together rather than turning them into clans warring over the turf of your affection.
Singing “Happy Birthday” is an act of collective appreciation, like the civilised version of exalting and sacrificing a beautiful young virgin to the hungry god Ba’al. It’s feelgood and pro-social – the people singing it get to subsume their individual identities within the larger project of celebration, which can produce a transcendent effect that’s enhanced by the candlelit darkness. You know what I mean: remember last time you were at a big birthday party at night, the lights went out, and there was an anticipatory hush as someone carried out the cake? Then the excitement of starting the song! “Haaaaaaaaaaa… ppy birthday to you!” Maybe I’m emotionally suggestible, but I have actually felt tears come to my eyes in those moments, especially if the birthday person was someone I really cared about. It’s a moment of sincere catharsis, like seeing the just-married couple kiss at a wedding, that overrides my years of chronic irony poisoning. Aww.
Now, you may well say, “But Eleanor, you’ve just outlined a set of benefits for the people singing the song, not the birthday person, who may feel embarrassed about being the centre of attention. Shouldn’t the celebrations cater to their preferences?” To which I would answer, no, absolutely not. We’re not characters in The Fountainhead; we live in a society. Do you know what you call someone who expects everyone around them to stop what they’re doing and cater to their exact desires and whims on their birthday? A six-year-old.
Unless you want to play pin the tail on the donkey and have your face painted by a $150-an-hour hire clown who’s trying to work off their ill-advised investment in a Bachelor of Circus Arts, your birthday is actually for the benefit of the people around you. It gives them permission to focus entirely on the task of loving and appreciating you, and you should let them have that gift. Unless you do really want the hire clown, in which case, go for it. And save me a balloon doggie.