Birthday celebrations in history have differed across the globe, and historically an annual ritual to recognize the anniversary of a completed lap around the sun wasn’t the norm for most people.
In the United States it was the advent of Industrialization — between 1860 and 1880 — that common people began to regularly acknowledge birthdays. Part of the reason was due to the growth of a consumer class who could afford to make and share cakes, and part of it was because precise keeping track of time (through mechanisms like watches) was more possible. Putting candles on a birthday cake was a custom practiced by German aristocrats in the 18th century, and the custom made its way to the US in the second half of the 19th.
Source: The Atlantic, “The strange origins of American birthday celebrations,” Nov 2, 2021, Joe Pinsker
