The uncomfortable truth of birthday hotspots
As we enter early November, you may have noticed more than a typical number of those around you have their birthday popping up. The beginning to the middle days of November seems to be a hotspot, of sorts, for this personal big day. A reflection upon why this also tends to garner a knowing, but uncomfortable, understanding when month nine before November is: February.
Being born in late October to early November is a pretty good indicator of the fact that you are a Valentine’s Day baby. While knowing the month in which you were born all by itself is not particularly weird, having a specific date to surmise it to certainly begins to border it. I myself was born on Nov. 9, and this realization led me to an incredibly awkward conversation with my mother. What in the world would compel me to ask such a thing to my mother, you ask? Well, I needed it to confirm this fact that I had heard from a high school friend.
Though this horrific epiphany of mine at first made me queasy, as I have grown to accept this intimate knowledge of my conception, I have become increasingly engrossed with the “why” of this phenomena. In no way am I surprised at this uptick in births around late October to mid-November in response to Valentine’s Day. Obviously, Valentine's Day is a holiday centered around love and partnership typically of the romantic variety. It only makes sense that many children are created on this day, whether on purpose or by some happy little accident. It then follows that it is only more natural for these babies to begin to pop out nine months later—in November. The one thing this rational understanding does not change is how this knowledge will always feel like a forbidden glimpse into my pre-conscious, post-consciousness.
Having said this, early November isn’t the only birthday hotspot, nor is it even the most common birthday! Early September actually brings home the first place trophy with the most common birthday around the world being Sept. 9. This is, presumably, due to the winter holiday season, and the long cold months making it a prime time for coupling in order to keep warm. Though, I argue that knowing that your parents had sex on Valentine’s Day is far more embarrassing than knowing your parents had sex sometime vaguely around and adjacent to the winter holiday season.
Naturally, the antithesis to the most popular birthday falls within the time when the majority of people are consummated. The least common birthday in a 365 day calendar year is December 25, or Christmas day. Special shoutout is deserved though to Leap Day for technically being the least common birthday since it only occurs every four years.
Birthday hotspots, in my opinion, say a lot about us as humans. Not many like to be alone around the holidays, many of which happen during the colder months of the year. Humans are social creatures, we like to be coupled, and a natural outcome of that for many is sex and the potential for children. The people that come from these couplings are manifestations of that humanity, of people finding each other during these joyful community times. At least, this is what I’m telling myself the next time someone brings up me being a “Valentine’s Day baby.”
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