The rage these days are birthday parties for one-year olds. One family invited fifty adults and fifty children for the event. For another one, family and friends traveled miles to get there.

As far as I know, none of the children wrote a journal of the event. But, I have a feeling, many of the adults did. Why? Because these people know, first, that their own lives will all be affected by this young life. Second, they also know life is a process, not an event. This first birthday is only the beginning.

It has been a lesson hard to come by. Only in modern times has the insight into the process of human growth from womb to tomb been seen for what it is: an exercise in human creativity.

Instead, like most other things in human society, the history of the celebration of birthdays is a mixed one. And in fact, not a universal one at all.

In the West, early civilizations—the Greeks and Romans and Persians, for instance—ignored birthdays almost entirely, with one exception. Ancient civilizations did mark the birth date of their rulers. These figures, after all, lived lives that would impact every member of the society—all of them—from the wealthiest of the wealthy to the poorest of the poor.

Religions, too, differed in their attitudes toward birthday celebrations, holy times to be honored. Long rejected as pagan festivals of magic meaning, religions were basically cautious about the mere fact of birth itself. Only gradually did some celebrate special birthdays as signs of adulthood. Others concentrated on name days and their relationship to the saint-models they inspired. A few, like the Hindus, rejected the notion of individual celebration of the birth event entirely.

And yet, the mixed history of the origin and celebration of birth dates is itself a strong message to modern society. In a world in which the now regular celebration of life is unique for the size and sometimes opulence of the occasion, there lurks under it another message entirely: Birth, it tells us, is only the beginning of life.

Life must be crafted. “Rebirth” can and does happen often in life. Birth is not a moment in time; it is a creative process that is not assured by years alone. It is possible to live for decades and not have really lived at all; it is possible to mature at a very early age and be wise beyond our years. Living requires that we come to understand the meaning and manner of both.

When the candles on the cake burn down and fizzle out, the process of growing up, of going on creating ourselves, remains to be done. Then and only then, like the emperors of old, will our own lives really affect the rest of society. All of it—for either good or bad.

—from June 2017 The Monastic Way by Joan Chittister