The family activity that immediately comes to mind is singing the Happy Birthday song. This activity isn’t terribly unique (it’s entirely possible that while I’m writing this blog post a family is singing their own rendition of Happy Birthday to celebrate the birth of one of their family members), yet we manage to make it our own regardless. I always love having friends attend birthday dinners because they get to experience my family’s rendition of the Happy Birthday song firsthand. Growing up it was always the thing I looked forward to the most (second only to the actual eating of the cake, and opening presents, of course) at birthday parties and even today I find myself falling back into a similar pattern of excitement whenever I realize it’s nearly time to sing the song. My family is full of talented vocalists. My parents are practically tone-deaf, which is why it’s so surprising that nearly all of my siblings and myself can sing so well. However, this phenomenon is abandoned whenever the Happy Birthday song begins. We have a time with it, shouting the lyrics, badly vocalizing and harmonizing in places that shouldn’t be harmonized. It is a spectacle, and it represents best the amount of fun and ridiculousness that can be produced by my family.
