Today is my birthday. As a religion scholar, I’ve long been fascinated by the rituals of specific holidays, and I’ve written several posts about how Americans observe a range of religious and secular feast days: Lent, Chrismukkah, snow days. Today, as I begin a new revolution around the sun, I’d like to discuss the holiday of the birthday. Birthdays and their associated rituals intrigue me because the truth is that I’m something of a birthday grinch. I was... Read more