Half Crown

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[00:56] This stat of the week is coming in from a listener.
[00:59] Joyce, last name withheld.
[01:03] Joey, stat of the week.
[01:07] Sent a message in.
[01:10] This one is about Pacer Terry Taylor.
[01:18] Earlier in the season, I hadn't heard this story.
[01:21] Earlier in the season, after the game, Carlisle was asked about Terry Taylor.
[01:28] He said that he commended the analytics director, Spencer Anderson, for finding Taylor from,
[01:36] whatever school he was from, and bringing him to Indiana.
[01:40] Of course, he went to Austin Peay.
[01:44] Austin Peay responded by making some merchandise that says, on the front, it has their logo.
[01:51] They're the governors, but it has their logo.
[01:54] Then it says, real big on the front, it says, whatever school Terry Taylor is from.
[02:01] So Terry Taylor wore that coming into one of the games, and they sent one to Rick Carlisle as well.
[02:10] So he said he has it in his office.
[02:12] That's fantastic.
[02:13] Yeah, which is pretty funny.
[02:15] It is a smaller school, but shout out to Austin Peay for having a little fun with that.
[02:21] Carlisle, eat a little crow on that.
[02:25] So you can buy them on the internet, or definitely at the home games.
[02:32] They're selling them at the stadium, but if you're not going to Austin Peay home games,
[02:37] and the season's over anyway, then it looks like there's some online.
[02:41] But it's fun.
[02:42] I think that's good stuff.
[02:43] Thank you, listener.
[02:45] Joyce.
[02:47] Jason, do you have any more questions that we can help you out with?
[02:50] Man, I got a whole list here.
[02:52] So if you want to do more, we can do more.
[02:55] This one comes courtesy of my lovely wife Jill, who asked what I thought was a simple question.
[03:07] I was like, why would we ever do that?
[03:08] But then she ended up Googling it, and apparently it's very interesting.
[03:11] So I want us to figure out what is the origin of birthday celebrations.
[03:18] Why do we celebrate birthdays?
[03:19] When did we start celebrating birthdays?
[03:22] Why do they take the shape that they do now with cakes and candles and all that good stuff?
[03:32] What do you guys think?
[03:36] My original thinking was, of course you would celebrate birthdays.
[03:40] Once you know what a year is, and you can keep track of dates,
[03:45] of course you would celebrate a birthday.
[03:47] I'd have thought the same.
[03:50] But I don't know.
[03:52] So when do we start keeping track of people's birthdays?
[03:58] Like the Mayans had calendars and stuff like that.
[04:01] They would have kept track of things.
[04:05] Even further back, the Mesopotamians.
[04:09] I'm sure the Mesopotamians, I mean, they made beer.
[04:11] I'm sure they figured out how to track the sun.
[04:17] The Mesopotamians.
[04:22] It seems likely to me that probably, like all things,
[04:28] technology is hoarded by those at the top of the social order as it comes to be.
[04:35] So it's likely that the only people who were really tracking down to the day
[04:42] were probably elite.
[04:44] So you're probably celebrating your ruler.
[04:47] Okay, okay.
[04:49] Or like the royal family or whatever.
[04:54] That makes sense.
[04:58] I feel like if there's a calendar that people are using,
[05:04] that everybody uses, as soon as you have that, it's easy to mark that on.
[05:12] Sure.
[05:13] But paper used to be a very expensive product, right?
[05:16] And I'm not sure that people were making tablets or calendars for people, right?
[05:23] Do you just get the far side calendar?
[05:30] I mean, even as late as the 19th century in the United States,
[05:35] there are lots of people that ended up becoming famous and influential
[05:41] that had no idea what their actual birthday was.
[05:43] Like Frederick Douglass famously has no idea what his birthday was
[05:47] and he adopted either Valentine's Day or some other famous holidays
[05:52] like being his birthday or something like that because he had no idea.
[05:55] Interesting.
[06:00] And so, you know, maybe if I'm a ruler and maybe I'm celebrating my birthday,
[06:08] I mean, really, it's not me celebrating my birthday.
[06:10] I want other people to celebrate my birthday.
[06:12] That's what I really want, right?
[06:14] Oh, yeah, I don't want to do that.
[06:15] Exactly.
[06:16] But the benefit to people acknowledging how important you are
[06:21] is probably they get stuff.
[06:23] So it's like a feast day, right?
[06:25] Mm-hmm.
[06:26] Mm-hmm.
[06:27] So it does have some, you know, community utility.
[06:34] Right.
[06:35] Well, and in, you know, like Game of Thrones and stuff like that,
[06:39] they had the name day or whatever,
[06:43] and that hearkens to a time that was like, I mean, obviously, it's fantasy,
[06:48] but like, you know, hearkens to a time that was like prehistory kind of,
[06:53] but like even in prehistory time, they had this notion, I guess,
[06:59] that there was a birthday to celebrate the things.
[07:04] Yeah.
[07:05] There was a cycle to life on Earth and...
[07:11] Yeah, even when winter doesn't come around annually,
[07:14] when you just have to guess when winter's going to come.
[07:19] We've had 10 years of no years.
[07:22] That tracks.
[07:28] Yeah.
[07:29] Mm-hmm.
[07:30] Mm-hmm.
[07:32] So, yeah, what?
[07:34] So is the question, I guess the question is like when was the first birthday,
[07:40] like that people recognize or invented, I guess?
[07:44] I guess, sure, yeah.
[07:46] Yeah, we can start with that, and then...
[07:50] Yeah, how did we get to the point where like it's cake and candles, basically?
[07:57] Yeah.
[07:58] Like it's a thing that everybody does, you know?
[08:04] I guess that's a lot to cover, so let's focus on the first part.
[08:11] Yeah, I'm tempted to say it was the Romans.
[08:15] Okay.
[08:16] Instead of, you know, maybe the Greeks or even the...
[08:18] Well, maybe the Egyptians are a better guess for this.
[08:21] The Romans are just a little crazy in vain when you look at their real class.
[08:25] Mm-hmm.
[08:26] So it's sort of an easy target.
[08:27] Sure.
[08:28] But the Egyptians did build some like Goliath monuments to themselves in death,
[08:32] so there's that.
[08:34] A little bit of vanity.
[08:35] Yeah.
[08:39] So, yeah, I'll go ancient Egypt, a couple thousand B.C. maybe.
[08:44] Okay, okay.
[08:47] And yeah, I don't know what we got.
[08:52] Do you think the time of the pharaohs?
[08:54] Yeah.
[08:58] So I feel like with the pharaohs, you know,
[09:00] you're looking for reasons to celebrate those guys.
[09:06] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
[09:08] And as for when it became cake and ice cream,
[09:17] there's two on the nose to just go with like Marie Antoinette or something.
[09:21] Mm.
[09:24] Yeah, could be, I guess.
[09:29] That makes sense.
[09:31] I was thinking it was more, that's more of a, that's a big candle thing,
[09:37] you know, like the same way that whatever, the tooth fairy?
[09:43] No, not the tooth fairy.
[09:45] Santa Claus, you know, getting ubiquitous.
[09:49] Yeah.
[09:50] Throw a couple commercials of people celebrating with cakes with candles
[09:54] and then everybody's got to do it.
[09:57] According to pumpitupparty.com.
[10:00] That's where I'm at, too.
[10:01] All right.
[10:02] It all started with the Egyptians.
[10:05] Yeah.
[10:07] It was referenced to the pharaoh's birthday.
[10:09] Good job, Harper.
[10:11] Woo-hoo.
[10:13] When pharaohs were crowned in ancient Egypt,
[10:16] they were considered to have transformed into gods.
[10:19] This was the moment in their lives that became important,
[10:23] more important even than their physical birth.
[10:25] And so they celebrated that day, I guess.
[10:30] Greeks started with the birthday candles.
[10:33] Greek offered tributes to gods, including the lunar goddess Artemis.
[10:39] Yeah.
[10:40] Thick sacrifices.
[10:41] Like a moon-shaped cake.
[10:42] You just, like, kill somebody else on your birthday.
[10:45] Donate with lit candles.
[10:47] Yep.
[10:48] There we go.
[10:50] Go, Greeks.
[10:53] So in pagan cultures, days of major change,
[11:00] such as these birthdays, welcomed evil spirits.
[11:02] So they lit candles in response to the spirits to keep them away.
[11:10] The Romans, it seems, were the first to celebrate
[11:13] the birth of the common man.
[11:16] How democratic.
[11:18] Yup.
[11:19] Tracks.
[11:22] Any Roman turning 50 years old would receive a special cake
[11:25] baked with wheat flour, olive oil, grated cheese, and honey.
[11:29] Mm.
[11:30] Mm.
[11:31] That's nice.
[11:32] Only men, though.
[11:33] Wow.
[11:34] Okay.
[11:35] Free men.
[11:38] Gets whittled down quick that far back.
[11:40] Yeah.
[11:41] Depends on how you define man.
[11:45] Yeah, I see that in Genesis, chapter 40,
[11:53] there was a mention of the pharaoh's birthday.
[11:58] Mm.
[11:59] So now the third day was pharaoh's birthday,
[12:02] and he gave a feast for all his officials.
[12:05] Not the common man, the officials.
[12:07] The officials, yeah.
[12:08] Mm-hmm.
[12:09] He lifted up the heads of the chief cupbearer
[12:12] and the chief baker in the presence of his officials.
[12:15] He restored the chief cupbearer to his position
[12:18] so that he once again put the cup into pharaoh's hand.
[12:25] So we were pretty good on that.
[12:27] Yeah.
[12:28] We were pretty good there.
[12:29] Yeah.
[12:30] Good job, Herbert.
[12:32] Yeah.
[12:33] Yeah, and then this points out that there's a theory
[12:36] that nobles were the only people who could afford
[12:39] to have birthday celebrations for a long, long time.
[12:43] So could be the reason behind wearing the custom
[12:46] of wearing a birthday crown.
[12:48] Mm.
[12:49] Mm.
[12:50] You know what we got for our kid's half birthday?
[12:56] We got a half birthday crown.
[12:58] Nice.
[12:59] Isn't that just a tiara?
[13:01] No, it's just a little tiny crown,
[13:04] and on it it said one half, so.
[13:10] Didn't fit me.
[13:11] I tried.
[13:12] I'm sure there's some excellent pictures of that.
[13:15] Yeah.
[13:17] I found another Terry Taylor t-shirt.
[13:19] I can't find the one that you're talking about
[13:21] because it would be awesome,
[13:22] but I found another one that says,
[13:24] always be yourself unless you can be Terry Taylor.
[13:27] Then always be Terry Taylor.
[13:31] That is good.