Birthday Tea Party

 Birthday Tea Party cut across cultures, countries and caste barriers and are celebrated with as much enthusiasm and zeal as any other festival. This commemoration of one’s age anniversary has taken the public fancy and how!

The history of Birthday Tea Party celebrations is age old. Soon as the human race began to be able to read the cycle of the moon and calculate when a full year had passed, they began to hobnob with the idea of anniversaries. Believe it or not, the first birthdays were celebrated as a means to ward off evil spirits by conglomerating all one’s kith and kin in one place.

Traditions most popularly encountered at a birthday party are:

Birthday cake – cakes used to be round previously; today they come in many shapes
Birthday candles – number of candles is traditionally equal to the person’s age; some people take one candle more than the age and leave it aflame for good luck
Blowing out of candles/Birthday wish – if all the candles are blown out in one attempt, the person asks for a wish secretly and gets it!
Birthday song – ‘Happy Birthday to you’ is most popular
Birthday gifts and cards
Birthday decorations –balloons, crepe streamers, confetti, whistles and cheerfully coloured long pointed paper hats

One cannot do without celebrating one’s birthday with a party. Especially because planning a birthday party has become very simple these days.

Birthday party supplies were never so freely available. Cakes, candles, balloons, crepe streamers, return gifts – you name it and you have it – in packets neatly arranged according to popular party themes.

Birthday party supplies are themed, too –

Age – birthday party supplies for age-themed parties are easily available for all ages – one or seventy. All décor items bear the figure or come in the shape of that figure.
Colour – select a colour and order supplies in that colour. Choose solid colours or prints or stripes.
Culture – choose your theme from among many like Egyptian, Oriental or Island.
Apparel – the dressing up theme is a great hit with children. Themes like fairy tales, toon characters, world leaders is selected and the guests are asked to dress according to the theme – also, the birthday party supplies are ordered accordingly.

All birthday parties are incomplete without birthday party balloons.

‘Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon,’ was what Winnie the Pooh said and summarised what every young one felt.

There is a history behind balloons. The first balloon was made in 1824 by Professor Michael Faraday in the Royal Institution, London for experimental purposes. Hydrogen was used as the filling gas.

Toy balloons were first made in 1825, a year after their experimental usage. Thomas Hancock, a rubber manufacturer, made them. The balloons, though, that we see today were closest in appearance to balloons made as late as in 1847.
The earliest models of today’s balloons were made by J.G. Ingram who used vulcanized rubber.