The candles used on the birthday cake are certified with certainty only since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when they were placed on the dessert of Goethe, but the origins of the ritual of the candles are older and perhaps date back to the celebrations in honor of the goddess Artemis spread in Greek civilization. In the ancient world, in fact, fire was often considered a sort of incarnation of the divinities. More recent is the custom of placing candles on certain disasters for propitiatory purposes, born at the beginning of the modern age, from which, starting from the nineteenth century, the tradition of putting them on the birthday cakes has developed. Previously they did not exist because the birthday was not celebrated: according to the mentality widespread in Europe until the modern age, the important date for a person had to be that of death, from which eternal life began. The birthday, representing the beginning of earthly life, was not worthy of being remembered. The custom of celebrating the day of its birth has only established itself in the last centuries.
The invention of the birthday and the origins of the birthday cake
The birthday, unlike what you can think, is celebrated only for a few centuries: tradition existed in ancient times, at least in some civilizations and in some social classes, but after the advent of Christianity it was abandoned. For the ancient Christians, the only date worthy of attention was that of death, because it constituted the beginning of eternal life; The birthday, which instead celebrated the beginning of earthly life, considered only a moment of passage pending the otherworldly life, mattered much less.
Consequently, in the centuries of the Middle Ages and, in part, during the modern age, not only was the birthday not celebrated, but most of the people ignored the date of their birth. At least in some social classes, the celebration of the honomastic was more widespread. The interest in knowing the day of his birth was established in aristocratic environments starting from the Renaissance and gradually spread in the other social classes, giving life to the tradition of celebrating the birthday, which, in its current form, has only established itself in the last centuries.
The invention of the birthday cake is also relatively recent. The practice of preparing a special cake on the occasion of the birthday is attested for the first time in the fifteenth century in the rich families of Germany, but various centuries were needed to spread in other countries.
How the tradition of birthday candles on the cake was born
According to many sources, the tradition of candles originates in the ancient world, but the use that made it was different from the current one. In numerous civilizations of the past, fire was considered a representation, if not an incarnation, of divinity. In the Greek world, the candles were used to remove the evil spirits and probably turned on in the rituals in honor of the goddess Artemis: it was believed that smoking transported people’s desires to the goddess.
From the Greek world, the use of candles in propitiatory rites passed to Roman civilization. Later, the first Christians, while abandoning many pagan rituals, retained the use of candles in their liturgy.
The tradition of putting them on the cakes is much later. Only in the XV-XVI centuries did he begin to establish himself, in limited environments and very gradually, the custom of placing candles on some dishes for propitiatory purposes. The use of candles for birthday and, more specifically, the tradition of turning on as many candles as there are the years that are being turned, is even more recent. The first certain attestation dates back to 1802 and concerns a famous person: Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the famous German writer, who on August 28 of that year celebrated his fifty -third birthday with a cake on which 53 candles were placed. In the nineteenth century, however, the custom was still limited to the wealthy families and only with the passage of time did he establish himself in the rest of the population. In the twentieth century, the traditional song was associated with the candles Happy birthday to youcomposed in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.
