The Importance of Knowing your Birthdate or any date

 

My great-great grandmother was Sarah Jane Bailey. She lived in Hamblen County, Tennessee in the mid 1800's. She met and married my great-great grandfather Pleasant Thomas Smith. My Ancestors lived in rural Tennessee and the need for such information was basically nonexistent. When Sarah was applying for her widow's pension after Tom passed away, it was required that she give her date of birth. She didn't know it.  Sarah contacted her brother David for a transcription of the page in the family bible that listed all of the births for the Bailey family. Then she gave the information to the government. 

Back then how important was it to know your birthday or any any date?  You didn't need to know it, that is, until you really, really needed something, like a pension for time served in the war. I am not sure that people had identification cards like we do today. A person could actually change their name and go about their business as usual without having to do anything legal. I came across this several times while doing genealogical research. 

I can understand if a child was adopted and not having access to their birth certificate and not knowing their date of birth. But, there are countries who don't celebrate birthdays and the average person doesn't know when they were born.  I just watched a video (2019) about Yemen. When the interviewer asked random people (men) on the street how old they were all but one said that they didn't know. The reasoning behind this is that a birthdate was never celebrated and was viewed as unimportant. Where I live there are a lot of Burmese and working in a hospital I see a lot of January 1st birthdates.  Not knowing a date of birth is still an issue for various places in the world today. 

The celebration of one's birthday began in Roman culture. A cake was baked to bring good wishes. Then the celebration spread to the west, which was embraced as a tradition. I don't know about you, but I rather like the idea of knowing when I was born.