Last week I completed another trip around the sun. Because we were attending a convention, there really wasn’t anything special about the day. That is usually not the case in our family, but I have spent many of my birthdays at conventions, so the celebration gets moved to another day.

Birthday celebrations involve parties and friends and decorations and cake and presents. It has become an expectation in our culture. And it seems like children’s birthday parties have become a competition of sorts, with people spending absurd amounts of money to lay bragging rights as to whose party was the best.

Birthday celebrations have not always been a reality. Much has been written about the origins of celebrating birthdays coming from mythology and magic. Some will tell us that Jewish tradition did not allow for birthday celebrations, yet interestingly they always tell us how old someone was when they died.

It became a custom in the early church to speak of the day of a person’s death as his or her “birthday” to a new life. St Ambrose wrote, “the day of our burial is called our birthday, because, being set free from the prison of our crimes, we are born to the liberty of the Saviour“, and “wherefore this day is observed as a great celebration, for it is in truth a festival of the highest order to be dead to our vices and to live to righteousness alone.”

Jesus spoke with Nicodemus about the need to be “born again.” It is not something we do, but something God gives us. And our new life does not have to wait until the day of our death to begin. It is a reality in our lives here and now.

1 Peter 1:3–4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you,

That is something worth celebrating.