Why is it that birthdays are so fun to celebrate – both for the birthday person and those celebrating with them?

I was born on January 8th and today is my birthday – please hold the applause! Ha. (I did very little when it happened…)

Part of the joy of celebrating one’s b-day is singing the Happy Birthday To You song. Part of it may involve other songs that have become a part of one’s birthday, along the years.

Certainly, the Beatles had a reason behind their famous song, Birthday, right? Just ask researchers about Jayne Mansfield, the blonde bombshell actress from the 50’s and 60’s, who starred in the film 'The Girl Can't Help It'.

Here’s how Jayne Mansfield’s starring role in that film motivated the Fab Four to pen their famous Birthday song - it was in 1968 that the four lads found out that the old rock film from the 50’s was scheduled to be on the TV later that night, Paul explained:

“Fats Domino, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran were in it, and we wanted to see it, so (before we watched the film on TV) we started (making the song) at 5 o'clock pm and just did a backing track, a very simple 12-bar blues thing with a few bits here and there. We had no idea what it was going to be or what was going to go on top of it. We didn't have time for anything else. Then we went back to my house, watched the film (on TV) and then went back to the studio and made up some words to go with it all, which were, 'They say it's your birthday, well, it's my birthday too, yay.' This song was just made up in an evening. We hadn't ever thought of it before then. It's one of my favorites, because it was instantaneous.”

Birthday celebrations are like that – they can become instantaneous gifts to yourself and to others, if we’ll let them be - just as life can be.

Does your life have ANY real spontaneity to it? If not, why not? Here are some thoughts for this year’s birthday (and other celebrations in 2024).

1. I’ve found that a life lived with bursts of spontaneous moments can be most enjoyable, refreshing and memorable. In fact, celebrations may even add more birthdays to your life, researchers say.
2. Not celebrating can create negativity and angst in one’s own life.
3. Giving gifts to others during celebratory events like birthdays or other spontaneous events can free you up from miserly, miserable living – though it may initially cause you some level of pain. Just ask the king of nay-sayers, Bill Murray, from his starring role in Scrooged.

Live Longer, and Whistle

Nobody wants to come to the end of their life and realize that it was a big, unhappy failure. Celebrating the very small wins is really all a person can ask for in their life. Once awakened, and saved from suicide, even George Bailey quickly saw how big the small things were in his life. Mother Theresa saw it this way: “There are no great things, only small things with great love.” Walt Disney suggested a little celebratory music should happen while you do your thing.

The main lyric in particular strikes me:

Stop the Negativity

You were fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Grab hold of that truth. Live in that reality, because all other choices eventually crash down in a hopeless pile of destruction and loss. You are someone special to someone else. Celebrate yourself and invite them into the celebration. People are just waiting to dance and laugh and enjoy life with you – because they want to enjoy it for themselves, too.

Roberto Benigni’s reaction to winning the Academy Award for Life is Beautiful is, itself, a beautiful expression of life:

​

Give gifts to others whenever it strikes you to do so – even if they turn out to be goofy AND a good story for the future.

Give big. Give with your heart. Give till it hurts, because tears of sadness need to be turned to tears of joy – even if the gift given is NOT perfect. Here’s one of my good stories: in my book, Finding Malone (hyperlink Finding Malone here), that I mention in a previous Newsletter, I write about how, as a grown man, I searched through years of history to find the soldier who wore a WWI helmet I had in my possession - a gift from my dad when I was just 15-years-old. I owned it for decades and eventually enlisted the aid of my own teenage son’s high school classmates to “find” Sgt. Anthony J. Malone. We soon found where Mr. Malone had lived, by way of search engines and lots of elbow grease! Though he had just passed away, his obituary pointed us to his widow! We secured Mrs. Malone’s phone number and then assembled my son’s friends and classmates together - and called her. Her honest, rough response to us, that she later revealed? “I thought it was an internet scam!!” Ha - and YES, she was from the East Coast!

I tell the full story of delivering the helmet to Mrs. Malone in my book, Finding Malone. Check it out:

Here are some other good/bad gifts that may also make you laugh:

​

Since it’s my birthday today, let’s rejoin the remaining lads and see the Birthday song performed Live.

Birthday – I would like you to dance!! Birthday, take a cha-cha-cha chance!

More later,

Den

Den's Latest & Greatest

• Start your new year giving love and resources to those in need. You know that we’re all hit-up by organizations at the end of the year. Why not start giving at the beginning of the year? Here are two fine organizations that Susan and I know to be reputable and to whom we regularly donate:
  • ​World Vision - A great worldwide non-profit that helps little kiddos. We’ve “adopted” kids for years by financially giving a very small amount each month ($35!!). We follow them to adulthood!
  • ​Campus By The Sea - A terrific family-outreach that we’ve donated to for decades. (It’s also a GREAT camp for you to take your own family to for a week in the summer.
• Finally, Birthday Gifts for me? Well, maybe just go visit my ebooks and buy them for yourself and others; enjoy reading and laughing with the characters who laugh and live with me! Go here and click "Products", or buy my novel, To Trust In What We Cannot See, below.

$5.99 To Trust In What We Cannot See (ebook PDF) If the price is $5.99 above, click here to get the Summer discount! During the month of January 1913, Adolf Hitler,... Read more Get it now!

​