Should We Celebrate Birthdays?

One of my co-workers is a Jehovah's Witness. I overheard in conversation, while I was clocking in, that she doesn't celebrate birthdays. I asked her why not. She said that in the Bible, the only time birthdays were celebrated was to celebrate the birth of pagan kings. So they think it is pagan in origin, and they want to avoid paganism. This kind of reasoning isn't unique to Jehovah's Witnesses. Many Christians don't celebrate Christmas or Halloween for similar reasons. 

I asked her if she thought celebrating anniversaries were wrong. She did not. Birthdays are anniversaries of our birth, and the Bible does seem to celebrate the anniversaries of things, like Passover, so there is nothing intrinsically wrong with celebrating a birthday. She seemed to cede a bit, and told me that every year "around" her birthday, her dad made it a point to get her ice cream. And that's cool. It's an act of love. Just because some acts of love were done by pagans, or even perverted by pagans, doesn't mean they're wrong.

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