I read an interesting article yesterday about immigrants’ birthdays in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Seems there are several people who immigrate to the US each year that have no record or knowledge of their birthdays. They come from cultures or areas where this piece of information is not used or recorded. Or their calendar systems and ways of tracking dates is different than ours.

So, if an immigrant doesn’t know his/her birthday, the government assigns them one – January 1. The article talks about the large number of immigrant children in certain Atlanta-area schools with January 1 birthdays. African countries were mentioned as those where the immigrants often don’t know their birthdays or their calendars are seasonal instead of in months like ours. The Somali interpreter at one school explains that Somalis don’t tend to celebrate birthdays as Americans do.

This was fascinating to me, because on many international adoption lists there are heated discussions about “true” birthdays for our children. We lament that there might be inaccuracies in actual birthdates. We worry about how they will feel when they learn that the date may be off by a few days, weeks or even months.

(I’m not talking about the need to change a child’s age based on physical evidence/developmental tests that show the child’s age is wrong. I’m talking about our great concern that we just don’t know, for sure, 100% that the day we are told at adoption is our child’s birthday is truly the exact date.)

The interesting thing to me, was the quote by this Somali interpreter at the end of this article. “Their feeling is,” the interpreter explains, “As long as I’m in America, I don’t care.”

So, maybe we overdo the birthday thing? Maybe we worry for nothing. My understanding of birthday celebrations…when I step back and look at it…is a chance to make the person feel special, remembered, loved. A day to mark the passage of time, of maturing (of aging). And maybe a day to count our blessings of being able to be together and as the immigrants would say…be in America.

(Now I’ll get comments from those who aren’t in America, but you have to know that I do feel blessed to be in such a rich, abundant and comfortable country, despite our many flaws!)