Today, the most expensive birthday cake is priced at $75million... This episode of Curious Mind is about History of Birthday Celebration. Thank you for your support thus far. Sit back and enjoy the journey.
Birthday Cake is an important feature of any celebration today. Wait a minute, have you ever thought about how it came to be? I bet you haven't ...lol! Before we delve into what I have gotten from searching the internet, I challenge my readers to do some mental exercise. Think deep about this question and put down your guess on a piece of paper or your note app.
Done? Thank you for going through the activity. It is time to uncover the answer. Have fun!

The Beginning!

Legend has it that the history of birthday celebrations can be traced to ancient Greece and ancient Egypt. To break the tie of origination, I took a look into history. Egypt is generally seen as the oldest empire and also the earliest civilisation. So all chances are that the Egypt's legend came first. Some remarkable feat for my Africa continent.
For the Egyptians, it was the occasion of coronation of the new Pharaoh that gave birth to birthdays. Pharaohs were seen as gods, therefore the coronation was seen as their birth as gods. This is the oldest knowledge of birthdays known to man. The next came from Greece. Ancient writings of Philochorus showed that Greeks celebrated the birth day of their gods. They baked cakes to present in the temples. Artemis, goddess of the moon, is credited for the reason why Greeks made round cakes.
From these findings, birth day celebrations were attempts by men to pay tribute to gods. Today, we are being partakers of this great event. We are gods!

Why do we have candles on cakes?

Isn't it weird that we place candles on cakes and light them up? Sometimes I wonder how man came to know many things. Of all ways to beautify our cakes, why did we opt for candles with fire?
It all began in the Artemis' temple. The worshippers put lighted candles on the cake to make them glow like the moon (remember Artemis is Greek's goddess of the moon). It is also believed that smoke convey our prayers to God. Some suggest that this belief is basis for blowing out the candle and making a wish on birth days.

Modern Birthday Cake and Celebration

The fall of the Greek empire took with it many knowledge and practices. Some were discovered later through writings, others never surfaced again. However, birthday cakes re-surfaced around 17th century in Germany. They were used in celebrating children birthdays, called Kinderfest. Also the use of candles found its way back. This era, candle light symbolise "Light of Life". The number of candles used is usually the number of the kid's age plus one. The additional one candle is for more years to come. Come to think of it, why would I want to blow out my "Light of Life"?
However, the cost of producing the ingredients needed were on the high side. Only the rich could afford to give such a treat to their kids. If we still lived in such an age, very few of us would ever get a birthday cake as a kid. Thanks to the industrial revolution, productions scaled up, standard of living of the average man improved and every kid can get a cake on his birth day celebration.

Credit: Birthday Cake

Interesting Things to Know

1. World's Most Expensive Birthday Cake

Smashing the previous record of $50million, the most expensive cake today goes for $75 million. Oh yes! $75 million. Made by British designer Debbie Wingham. Took approximately 1,100hours (45 days 20hours) to make and weighs 1000pounds. Why does it worth this much?? Wingham has the explanation,

The cake has 4,000 diamonds, including a 5.2-carat pink diamond, a 6.4-carat yellow diamond and 15 five-carat white diamonds. Those 17 stones alone are worth more than $45 million. The included runway design is also bedazzled with 400 one-carat and 73 three-carat white diamonds, along with 75 three-carat black diamonds."

Credit: Most Expensive Cake
I am short of words. If you are thinking the cake will get no buyer, sorry to inform you that a rich man from United Arab Emirates got it for his daughter's birthday.

2. Largest Cake Ever

In terms of size the largest cake ever is not a birth day cake, rather it is a cake sculpture from Italy. Measuring a staggering size of 16.46 X 13.94 X 0.54 m . Wow! It took 250 men to complete it.

Credit: Largest Cake

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Thank you for taking your time to get some knowledge from my post. You should check out my previous post;

Life of a Color Blind Person

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