How Did We Start Celebrating Birthday Parties?

Birthday Celebrations involve a lot of traditions with interesting origins, from gift-giving, to cakes decorated with candles, to piñatas. In this video, we explain the origins of some of these practices, as well as the history of birthday parties in general. We answer the questions, "How did Birthday Parties become a thing?", "When did birthday celebrations start?", "Why do we blow out candles?", "Where did pinatas come from?", and more.
Twitter: / somas_academy

[@henrikleppa7632]

To expand on the note in 5:56:
Between 1988 and 2015 Warner/Chappell Music claimed to own the US copyright to the "Happy Birthday" song, and would extort money from people (mostly media/entertainment companies and restaurants), by threatening to sue them if they didn't buy a copyright license from them.
This lead to other companies coming up with their own birthday songs, but most of those didn't stick in the popular consciousness for three reasons:
(1) They were each owned by the company that created them, and thus other companies had the same lawsuit & licensing problems.
(2) Ordinary citizens and small businesses were "too small to sue" (suing them wouldn't have been profitable), and thus still continued using "Happy Birthday to You".
(3) Copyright laws and terms are different outside the US. (They're different for each country.)
In 2015, a US court found that Warner/Chappell Music only owned a specific piano arrangement, and that the song as a whole had been public domain in the US.

[@schrodingersmoose]

Birthdays are one of those things that I assumed was universal and never really thought about. Very enlightening video!

[@SomasAcademy]

Thank you! It's weird to realize that everything has a history, even mundane things like celebrating birthdays. I didn't even get into different celebrations around the world; it seems to be pretty common to only celebrate 1 birthday in many cultures, either the first birthday, or one somewhere around age 13 to celebrate coming of age.

[@analisaswann1039]

watching this a day before my birthday :) great video, really cool finding your channel!!

[@SomasAcademy]

Have a Happy Birthday, and thank you!

[@AskiatheGreat64]

Can you make videos about the forgotten civilization of Nubia?

[@SomasAcademy]

Nubia is on my list of topics to cover, but I'll need to do some more research before I'm ready to make any videos on the subject!

[@denizmetint.462]

Never would've guessed the word Pinata originated in the Italian language.

[@SomasAcademy]

Yes, I think most people would guess it came from Spanish - I sure did before I started researching!

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

It's piñata not pinata.