A 21st Birthday Celebration!
At a certain age you no longer look forward to your birthday. As we get older, we hate to be reminded that we are only getting closer to death. In contrast, a birthday for a child is looked forward to like their own personal Christmas. The change starts somewhere in your twenties. As teenagers and young adults there are only three birthdays that really matter. Your 16th birthday marks the beginning of conditional independence. Some of us got cars for our 16th birthdays and many of us had to wait. The car basically makes or breaks the 16th birthday. Now the 18th birthday signals the beginning of real independence. You can vote, signed contract, or move out of your parents' house and pretend to be an adult.
The next and most celebrated birthday is the 21st birthday. Now you are truly an adult. With the exception of renting a car, you can do practically everything real adults can do. Your 21st birthday means that no one can tell you quote "no." You can go out, drink all you want, and come home when the sun comes up. In this way, the 21st birthday means that you are no longer a child.
Many people in previous generations had serious jobs and grown-up lives when they reached 18. Nowadays children are often coddled all the way through college and will eventually meet the newly recognized quarter life crisis when they realize it's time to grow up. By the time someone in our parents' generation reached their 21st birthday they may have already been to war and back, bought a home, married, and had a few children. Now people rarely get their first real professional job when they are about 25 years old.
If the 21st birthday marks the beginning of adulthood, then why do most people spend it getting drunker than they ever have been before? Is it because we know that we will have less and less opportunities to act with such irresponsibility? Or are we, as a culture, becoming more immature? Does resentment toward responsibility signal immaturity?
It is clear that more people are taking longer to reach certain milestones such as marriage and parenthood. Is it that we are taking more thoughtful time on our way or are we just putting it off? I should let you in on a little secret – I am not a big drinker. I am biased when it comes to the traditional 21st birthday. I do think that it is a sophomoric celebration but I do think that it has more to do with the birthday girl or boy than the birthday itself.
Make the day even more special with the perfect 21st birthday invitations.
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