With mine coming up within this week, I’ve started to think more seriously about why that “excitement” faded away. Back then, a birthday did not feel like just another date on the calendar. It felt like an event you moved toward for weeks. I used to count down to mine (the struggle of having an end-of-month birthday 🙄), and the waiting itself was part of the joy. When you’re young, time moves slowly enough for anticipation to fully bloom. A year feels vast, so arriving at your birthday feels like arriving somewhere important.

Without getting too much into the pains of growing older and greyer each year, one thing I believe used to be part of the magic was that love felt visible, unconditional, with no need for an equal reciprocation. Parents cleaned the house, bought the cake, wrapped the gifts, called the relatives, neighbours, and whoever else was seen as someone who brought happiness for the child. Cousins showed up, school friends filled the rooms, balloons were tied up, candles were lit, and everyone sang a little too loudly and non in sync. As a child, you don’t always recognize the effort behind these things. You just feel surrounded by warmth and attention, and mistake that feeling for magic. Maybe that is what magic really was.

There was also something sacred in how little it took. We always had homemade decorations and cake created by my mom, new clothes to wear, and the people who loved you gathered in one room could make you feel rich beyond measure. Joy had not yet become complicated by comparison, performance, or the need for everything to be impressive. Ordinary things still carried wonder. Really it just boiled down to the presence of being felt as seen; as cherished, and as celebrated.

Maybe birthdays have not changed as much as we have. Growing up often means learning how things are made, what they cost, who had to work to make them happen. The mystery fades when you begin to see behind the curtain. But perhaps maturity is realizing that the curtain was never the point. The real miracle was always that people cared enough to create joy for you at all.

Maybe birthdays did not lose their magic. Maybe the magic was love, innocence, and being too young to know the difference. All things that we mistake nowadays as just bachpana. 

Question is though, should we rekindle that bachpana once again so we can see ourselves (and our special day!)  in the same light as we once did? 

(My 9th birthday, and my brother’s 6th birthday for reference…)

Why did our birthdays just feel so much more magical as a kid?