A birthday is the yearly anniversary of the day a person was born, and in much of the world it is marked with a cake, candles, a song, gifts and a party. It is not a religious festival and it has no fixed date for everyone, which is why it sits apart from the holidays on this site. This page sets out what is known about where the custom came from, which popular stories about it are true, legendary, disputed or false, what the Quran and Sunnah say, how scholars have ruled, and where some other monotheists stand. Every claim is sourced. Where the evidence is thin, such as the stories about Greek moon cakes, smoke that carries wishes, or evil spirits, we say so and label it.
Each step carries a tag. “Documented” means a reliable source states it. “Partly true”, “Disputed” or “Legend” means the evidence is mixed, late or thin, or that historians do not accept the story as history.
Live Science reports the view of Vladimir Emelianov of St. Petersburg University that the first evidence of birthday celebrations is in economic texts from Lagash, in Sumer, from the reign of King Lugalanda (about 2384 to 2378 BCE). The texts mention holidays for the births of the ruler’s children.
Emelianov says: “As far as I know, there was nothing like this in Egypt or ancient Asia Minor.” He adds that the first pharaoh birthday feasts known to history come only in the Ptolemaic era (305 to 30 BCE).
The King James Bible says that on the third day, “which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants: and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants” (Genesis 40:20). The chief baker was hanged, “as Joseph had interpreted to them” (verse 22).
Torah Musings quotes the Egyptologist Donald Redford: a birthday “may have occasioned some sort of celebration in all periods of Egyptian history; but prior to the first millennium B.C. no evidence has come down to us.”
Wikipedia reports that, according to Herodotus, of all the days of the year the one the Persians celebrate most is their birthday. The table was set with more food than usual, and on his birthday the king anointed his head and gave gifts to the Persians. Live Science also cites Herodotus on this.
Athenaeus, in the Deipnosophists (14.645), says an amphiphon is “a kind of cheesecake consecrated to Artemis, having figures of lighted torches round it.” He quotes Philochorus that it was brought to her temples and to the crossroads. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities says that at the Munychia, the festival of Artemis on the 16th of Munychion, cakes called amphiphontes were adorned with burning candles.
Wikipedia says that in ancient Rome a birthday (dies natalis) was originally an act of religious worship. Each person was thought to have a guardian spirit, the Genius (the Juno for a woman), owed devotion on the day of birth, usually at the household shrine. The rites could include lighting an altar, prayers, vows, anointing and wreathing a statue of the Genius, or sacrificing; incense, cakes and wine were common offerings.
Live Science adds that by the late Roman Republic individual birthdays were widespread, citing Plautus’s Pseudolus (191 BCE), a letter of Cicero about his daughter’s birthday (50 BCE) and an invitation from the Vindolanda tablets (1st century CE). Wikipedia notes that Ovid in exile kept his wife’s birthday rite and that Roman writers gave books and poems as birthday gifts.
Wikipedia says the Arval priesthood sacrificed for the welfare of the imperial family on their birthdays, and that the observance of a patron’s birthday or the honoring of a political figure’s Genius was one of the religious foundations of the imperial cult. In Pompeii the Genius of the living emperor was offered a bull.
The Mishnah (Avodah Zarah 1:3) lists among the festivals of the gentiles “the day of the festival of their kings, and the birthday of the king, and the anniversary of the day of the death of the king” (William Davidson translation on Sefaria). The Mayim Achronim article reads this as a ban on joining the feasts of a king’s birth, coronation and death, because they were idolatrous.
Wikipedia says Censorinus wrote De Die Natali (“On the Birthday”) in 238, apparently as a birthday gift for his patron Quintus Caerellius. It covers the natural history of man, the influence of the stars and the Genii, religious rites and music. Wikipedia’s article on the Genius quotes Horace describing the Genius as “the companion which controls the natal star.”
Horoscopes cast from the moment of birth are a real part of this world. Wikipedia says horoscopic astrology arose in the late 2nd or early 1st century BCE.
In his eighth homily on Leviticus, Origen wrote: “no one out of all the saints is found to have kept a feast day or a great banquet on the day of his birth; no one is found to have had gladness on the birthday of his son or daughter; only sinners rejoice over a nativity of this kind.” He names Pharaoh in the Old Testament and Herod in the New, and says both “stained the very festivity of their birthday with the shedding of human blood.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia says Origen asserts in this homily that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday. The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia says Origen, followed by Jerome, spoke decisively against celebrating the birthdays of saints and martyrs, whose death days should rather be thought of as their true natales dies.
Wikipedia says a saint’s day was typically kept on the anniversary of the saint’s martyrdom or death, seen as the entrance into heaven. In the Middle Ages ordinary people kept their saint’s day, but the nobility kept the anniversary of their birth: Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale opens with a king proclaiming a feast for his birthday. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that when the Christians of Smyrna, about 150 CE, wrote of Polycarp, they spoke of “the birthday of his martyrdom”, meaning the day he died.
Wikipedia reports that in 1746 Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s birthday was marked at Marienborn, in Germany. Andrew Frey described “a Cake as large as any Oven could be found to bake it, and Holes made in the Cake according to the Years of the Person’s Age, every one having a Candle stuck into it, and one in the Middle.” Wikipedia says the tradition of celebrating birthdays with a cake and candles began in Germany by the 18th century.
Wikipedia, quoting Goethe’s own account, tells of his 52nd birthday in Gotha, as a guest of Prince August of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. A large torte came in with some fifty colored flaming candles that “began to melt and threatened to burn down, instead of there being enough room for candles indicating upcoming years, as is the case with children’s festivities of this kind.”
Wikipedia says that the blowing out of the candles was documented in Switzerland in 1881, when researchers for the Folk-Lore Journal recorded “superstitions” among the Swiss middle class: a cake with a lit candle for each year of life, which the person celebrated had to blow out one by one. Wikipedia also says that today it is customary to make a wish when blowing out the candles, and that the wish is thought to come true if all go out in a single breath.
Wikipedia says that elaborate cakes were at first only available to the very wealthy, and that birthday cakes became accessible to the lower classes through the Industrial Revolution. National Geographic says that between 1900 and 1920 candles on cakes were the norm for the middle class in the US and UK, and that by the 1920s candles made for the purpose were mass-produced and sold by department stores such as Sears.
Wikipedia says the melody of “Happy Birthday to You” comes from “Good Morning to All”, traditionally attributed to the sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893, although the claim that they composed the tune is disputed. The sisters used it as a song young children would find easy to sing. The tune and birthday words first appeared together in print in 1912. A company registered a copyright in 1935, and in 1988 Warner/Chappell bought it for US$25 million.
In 2015 a federal judge ruled the copyright claim to the lyrics invalid, and in 2016 Warner Chappell agreed to pay back US$14 million in licensing fees. Wikipedia says the song is now in the public domain in the United States and the European Union.
Each carries a label: True, False, Partly true, Legend or Disputed. We correct claims on both sides, including claims that Muslim writers repeat.
We found no source for this date. The historian Emelianov, quoted by Live Science, says that as far as he knows there was nothing like a birthday celebration in Egypt in the early period, and that pharaoh birthday feasts are not known until the Ptolemaic era. Redford, quoted on Torah Musings, says no evidence has come down to us from before the first millennium BCE.
Torah Musings reports that Rashi reads the verse as a birthday, that Radak and Rabbi Bachya read it as the birth of a prince, and that the scholar James Hoffmeier proposes that the day of accession was spoken of as a divine birth, citing Psalm 2:7. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 10a) itself distinguishes a birthday from the day of accession. The Mayim Achronim article says the day was “probably” a coronation.
The first half is documented (card 4): a cake with lighted torches, offered to Artemis. The second half is not. Wikipedia says the link between Artemis and birthday candles has not been established, and National Geographic says there is no direct historical record of candles being placed on cakes to honor the gods. Wikipedia lists it only as one theory, that early Greeks used candles to honor Artemis’s birth on the sixth day of every lunar month, and in the same place says the link to birthday candles has not been established.
We found no ancient source for this. National Geographic reports a version of it from the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, which is a modern reference work, and says there is no direct historical record of candles being put on cakes to honor the gods. The 1881 Swiss record (card 12) mentions the blowing out and not a wish.
Two real sources report the belief. National Geographic quotes Margit Grieb of the University of South Florida saying children were thought “especially vulnerable on their birthdays to succumb to evil spirits” and that candles “may have served as a form of spiritual protection.” The Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, quoted by jw.org, says “evil spirits and influences have the opportunity to attack the celebrants” and that “the presence of friends and the expression of good wishes help to protect the celebrant.”
The core is documented: a cake with a candle for each year and one in the middle (1746, card 10), a candle for each year with room for more, at children’s festivities (Goethe, 1801, card 11), and the candles blown out one by one (Switzerland, 1881, card 12).
The account we found, Goethe’s own, concerns his 52nd birthday, on 28 August 1801, at Gotha. The fifty candles on that cake began to melt, and he says there was no room for the candles for the years to come, “as is the case with children’s festivities of this kind.” We could not find the letter of 1802 that some pages cite for this.
Live Science cites Plautus (191 BCE) and Cicero (50 BCE) for individual birthdays in the late Roman Republic, and Wikipedia describes how every Roman had a Genius to honor on the day. So the Romans did make the birthday of a private person widespread.
The first half is documented: Origen (card 8), the World Book and the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia. For the second half, Wikipedia says that in the modern era the three main branches of Christianity and almost all denominations accept birthdays, and that the Middle Ages kept saints’ days for ordinary people and birthdays for nobles (card 9).
The mass-market form is recent: candles on cakes became the norm for the middle class in the US and UK between 1900 and 1920, and by the 1920s department stores sold candles made for the purpose (National Geographic). Wikipedia says cakes reached ordinary people through the Industrial Revolution.
Horoscopes need a date of birth. Jehovah’s Witnesses quote The Lore of Birthdays that birthday records were “essential for the casting of a horoscope.” Wikipedia dates Hellenistic horoscopic astrology to the late 2nd or early 1st century BCE.
“Good Morning to All” was published in 1893 by Patty and Mildred J. Hill, and the melody is the one we know. The birthday words came later: the earliest dated book with them is from 1911, and the tune and words together appear in print in 1912.
In September 2015 the judge, George H. King, ruled that Warner/Chappell’s claim to the lyrics was invalid, because the 1935 copyright covered only particular piano arrangements and not the words. That ruling was about the claim.
Wikipedia says that according to the 1998 Guinness World Records it is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.
In the story as Wikipedia summarizes it from Perrault, the fairies are invited to the christening of the princess to be her godmothers and bless her. The curse, a prick from a spindle, comes later. It is a fairy tale, and the blessings are at the christening, not at a birthday.
This is a claim some Muslim writers make. The rulings we read (below) rest on general texts: that the religion is what Allah and His Messenger legislated, that what is added to it is rejected, that the Prophet replaced older days of play with the two Eids, and that a person who copies a people is one of them. The Permanent Committee also notes that it is not recorded that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, or the Companions held such a celebration.
Text only. We show no picture of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, or of anyone else, and no religious symbol. Pagan deities appear here only as history, so that the claims made about them can be checked, and with no praise or depiction.
Anas reports that when the Prophet (ﷺ) came to Medina the people had two days of games from the pre-Islamic period, and he said: “Allah has substituted for them something better than them, the day of sacrifice and the day of the breaking of the fast.” (Abu Dawud 1134). Ibn Umar reports that he said: “He who copies any people is one of them.” (Abu Dawud 4031).
The Permanent Committee states that it is not recorded that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, established a celebration for his own birth, or that the Caliphs and Companions did so for theirs. We cite this only as the Committee states it.
Grading as shown on sunnah.com: Abu Dawud 1134 Sahih (Al-Albani); Abu Dawud 4031 Hasan Sahih (Al-Albani).
ThemeAllah gave two days, and the Prophet taught us to keep to them.
The King James Bible says he made a feast for all his servants on his birthday, and on that day lifted up the head of the chief butler and the chief baker. The chief baker was hanged, “as Joseph had interpreted to them.” Origen and the Jehovah’s Witnesses both point to this feast as an example of a birthday kept by one who did not serve God.
We name no date for him, because the scholars quoted above do not agree on one.
ThemeThe only birthday in the Torah, and its end
The King James Bible says Herod made a supper on his birthday for his lords, high captains and chief men of Galilee. The daughter of Herodias danced, and at her request Herod sent and beheaded John in the prison (Mark 6:21 to 28; Matthew 14:6 to 11). Origen counts this with the feast of Pharaoh as a birthday stained with blood.
The Quran praises Yahya, peace be upon him, as a prophet. “So the angels called him while he was standing in prayer in the chamber, ‘Indeed, Allah gives you good tidings of John, confirming a word from Allah and [who will be] honorable, abstaining [from women], and a prophet from among the righteous.’” (3:39). “[Allah] said, ‘O John, take the Scripture with determination.’ And We gave him judgement [while yet] a boy” (19:12). “And affection from Us and purity, and he was fearing of Allah” (19:13). We do not claim the Quran tells the story of the feast.
We give the Bible’s account as the Bible tells it, and take from it only what it says about the feast.
ThemeA birthday supper at which a righteous man was killed
The amphiphon was a cake consecrated to her, with figures of lighted torches around it, and it was brought to her temples and to the crossroads (card 4). The festival of Munychia, on the 16th of Munychion, was hers.
We say nothing in her favor and show nothing of her. She is named only because the claim that her cakes began the birthday cake is repeated so often.
ThemeA pagan offering, joined to the birthday cake by a theory the sources do not support
Wikipedia says that each Roman was held to have a guardian spirit, the Genius, who followed the person from the hour of birth, and for a woman a Juno. On the birthday it was honored with prayers, vows, wreaths and offerings of incense, cakes and wine. Hundreds of household shrines have been found at Pompeii.
This is a pagan belief, named only as history. We say nothing in its favor and show nothing of it.
ThemeThe birthday as an act of worship of a spirit other than Allah
A Roman writer who composed, in 238, a work on the birthday addressed to his patron Quintus Caerellius. Wikipedia says it treats the stars and the Genii, music, religious rites and the natural history of man.
He is a source for what Romans believed, and we do not rely on him for any claim about Islam.
ThemeA Roman book on the birthday
He wrote that the saints did not keep a feast on the day of their birth and that only sinners did so, and he named Pharaoh and Herod. The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia says Jerome followed him in speaking against celebrating the birthdays of saints and martyrs.
Translations of the homily differ in wording, and we quote one. We take no side in what Christians later decided.
ThemeA Christian teacher, against the birthday
Frey’s account of the count’s birthday at Marienborn, with a candle in the cake for each year of his age and one in the middle, is the earliest dated description we found of the cake with candles.
We do not know from the sources we read whether he began the custom or only followed it.
ThemeThe cake with a candle for each year
His account of his 52nd birthday at Gotha, in 1801, tells of a torte with about fifty candles that began to melt, and of children’s festivities where there is room for the years to come. We could not confirm the popular story that he began or spread the Kinderfest (myth 21).
We found no source that says he founded the custom.
ThemeA man who wrote down what was already done
Wikipedia says Patty Hill was a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky, and that her sister Mildred was a pianist and composer. They published “Good Morning to All” in 1893, in Song Stories for the Kindergarten, as a song small children could sing easily. The birthday words came later (card 14).
Wikipedia says whether they composed the tune is disputed.
ThemeA morning greeting that became the birthday song
Jennifer Nelson, with her company Good Morning to You Productions, sued in June 2013, and Rupa Marya sued a week later. In September 2015 the judge ruled the claim of Warner/Chappell to the lyrics invalid. In 2016 the company agreed to pay back US$14 million in fees, and the song is described as public domain in the United States and the European Union.
The 2015 ruling and the 2016 settlement are separate events.
ThemeA copyright claim that ended in court
Wikipedia says that on 19 May 1962 she sang “Happy Birthday” at a Democratic Party fundraising gala at Madison Square Garden, for the 45th birthday of President John F. Kennedy, which fell ten days later, on 29 May. More than 15,000 people attended.
We state only the date, the place and the occasion, and nothing about the performer or the event beyond them.
ThemeThe song sung at a public gala
Wikipedia says the chain was founded on 17 May 1977 by Nolan Bushnell, who also founded Atari, as an entertainment restaurant with arcade games, rides and shows. It began as Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre.
The sources we read do not say how far it shaped the birthday party, so we say nothing on that.
ThemeAn entertainment restaurant chain
In Perrault’s tale, as Wikipedia summarizes it, seven good fairies are invited to the christening of the princess to be her godmothers and bless her. It is a story, and we name it only to put right the idea that the blessings were given on a birthday.
A made-up tale and not history.
ThemeBlessings at a christening, and not a birthday
The Islamic position on birthdays does not rest on where the custom came from, though the Roman rites behind it are documented (cards 5 and 6). It rests on three things shown below from the words of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him: the religion is what Allah and His Messenger legislated and what is added to it is rejected, the Prophet replaced older days of play with the two Eids, and a person who copies a people is counted with them.
Several rulings name the birthday celebration directly. We show only what the scholars say, each with its source. The translations on al-fatawa.com are machine translations as shown there, and we quote them unaltered.
Muslims are not the only ones among whom teachers have spoken against the birthday celebration. We give the against side first, with its sources. We found no Jewish or Christian source that settles the question for all of its community, so neither is of one mind, and we give the view and its limits.
The Mishnah (Avodah Zarah 1:3) lists “the birthday of the king” among the festivals of the gentiles. Rabbi Simi Grosman, in a study of birthdays in halakhah, gives three reasons why many rabbis oppose the celebration: following the ways of the non-Jews (chukas hagoyim), since the Yerushalmi explains the king’s birthday as a gentile holiday; the saying in the Talmud (Eiruvin 13b) that it would have been better had man not been created; and the evil eye.
He reports that the Munkatcher Rebbe (Minchas Elazar) held that birthday celebrations never existed among the Jewish people, and called them a foreign thing with no precedent; that Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno was unhappy about a planned celebration and said that making a special day of one’s birthday was not the practice of the Jewish people; that Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky is recorded as opposed; and that the Arugas Habosem calls it improper, as following the ways of the non-Jews.
The Mayim Achronim article notes that the only birthday the Torah mentions is Pharaoh’s (Genesis 40:20), and says it was probably his coronation day and an idolatrous festival.
Others allow it: the same essay finds that some authorities kept birthday meals, among them the Chofetz Chaim, the Kesav Sofer and Rav Yosef, who held a party for his 60th birthday (Moed Katan 28a, where Grosman says it is unclear whether it is a model for others), and that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein called a birthday meal optional (dvar reshus). Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman gave the same answer, though he added that because of the evil eye it is better not to hold a party. It concludes that celebrating “in the proper spirit and mindset” is not incongruent with halakhah. Wikipedia says that rabbis are relatively divided although the majority of the faithful accept it.
Origen wrote that “only sinners rejoice over a nativity of this kind” and that the saints, “filled with the Holy Spirit, they execrate this day,” citing Pharaoh and Herod. Wikipedia says early Christians, as the World Book puts it, “considered the celebration of anyone’s birth to be a pagan custom.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses state: “Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays because we believe that such celebrations displease God.” They also say “The Bible never refers to a servant of God celebrating a birthday,” and that it records two birthday celebrations, both by people who did not serve God and both in a bad light (Genesis 40:20 to 22 and Mark 6:21 to 29). They call birthday celebrations pagan in their roots, citing folklore of evil spirits, astrology and magic candles.
Others keep it: Wikipedia says that in the modern era the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestantism, and almost all Christian denominations, consider celebrating birthdays acceptable or a choice of the individual, and that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the exception.
Quran translations are Sahih International, from api.alquran.cloud, with each verse linked to quran.com. Hadith are linked to sunnah.com; gradings are given as shown there (Al-Albani for the Sunan). Where we use Wikipedia, we use it for what it reports and mark disputed points, and we check the main claims against other sources.