Six months after Lorraine C Ladish turned 59, she began receiving emails from fashion stores, supermarkets, and opticians offering discounts for her half-birthday. She used one offer to buy a magenta leather jacket and shared her celebration on TikTok. Ladish, a digital content creator who makes a living by sharing her age online, found that marking the midpoint between birthdays allowed her to ‘squeeze every second, every month, out of my late 50s’.
The Rise of Half-Birthdays
Half-birthdays are having a moment. On TikTok, half-cake designs, half-birthday banners, and half-candles abound. One French brand even released a comma-shaped candle for decimal half-birthdays. Restaurants like TGI Fridays, Ember Inns, and All Bar One offer half-birthday congratulations with discounts or free cocktails. In the US, Betty Crocker provides half-birthday menu ideas, including skewered half hotdog buns and colour-blocked desserts. The battenberg cake is a ready-made half-birthday option, or one can bake a circular cake, halve it, and stack the pieces into a semicircular layer cake.
Personal Reasons for Celebrating
Graphic designer Cheyanne Carroll in Florida created a half-birthday card for her husband, born on New Year’s Eve. The design, showing only the top half of the greeting, became one of her top sellers. She says, ‘It was just a funny thing I thought I would do for my husband. Now I see that lots of people celebrate.’ Author Erin Dealey wrote The Half Birthday Book for children with birthdays near winter festivities, when school is out and friends are away. She sent a copy to Jimmy Kimmel, who has spoken about celebrating his half-birthday, but did not hear back.
Historical and Cultural Context
Half-birthdays are not new. On Gransnet, a UK-based website, posters recall celebrating half-birthdays in the 1950s with small presents like chocolate or sweets. Literary precedents include Adrian Mole, who was 13 and three-quarters, and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, who recommends celebrating ‘unbirthdays’ 364 times a year. Candice Meyer from St Louis, Missouri, started a family tradition with no presents, just a dessert and singing. She says, ‘I wanted a way to slow things down and give them a moment that felt just theirs, without all the logistics that come with a full birthday.’
Half-Birthdays as Milestones
In Idaho, you can get a learner permit at 14 and a half; in California, at 15 and a half. At 16 and a half, you can apply to the Australian army. These genuine milestones often come with cake. However, calculating the correct date can be tricky due to varying month lengths. An online half-birthday calculator can help. Jessica Jimenez, who runs a printables business in Florida, enjoys that half-birthdays go under the radar: ‘It doesn’t pop up on your Facebook feed. It’s not in everybody’s calendar. It’s like, this is just for us and it’s fun.’
A Way to Slow Down Time
Ladish stopped celebrating half-birthdays when she entered her 60s but may revive them as she approaches 70. She reflects, ‘You do not leave a decade the way you enter it. I was not the same person at 50 as at 59. I’d lost friends. I’d had a close call with colon cancer. Maybe when I’m 68, I will be like: OK, let’s celebrate half-birthdays, because I will never be in my 60s again.’ Ultimately, a half-birthday is a celebration of being alive. No occasion is needed, but if it helps, why not?
