It's my birthday, spend money on me

After reading an article from Yawning Bread entitled It's my birthday, spend money on me.

Call me a dolt, but I still can't figure out how one's birthday is meaningful to anyone but oneself, and why anybody else should "celebrate" this day. But obviously, if someone takes the day off on account of "celebrating his birthday", some kind of party must be in the works. After all, it's difficult to imagine him spending the day in solitary meditation.

And indeed a party is what happens. Friends are told, "It's my birthday this Sunday, come to my party," and then they are left scrambling for money to buy a present.

I sort of agree. It is not that I am stingy, but I feel many times, many people simply "forget" the others with either lower income, or more commitments, or those who simply do not want to spend money to socialize and get to know friends better.

I mean, you throw birthday parties for your kids, or a house warming party, and sooner or later, you will hear some gossips about the "Mr. Tan so ngeow one, give such cheap presents" , or that "Mrs. Lee, aiyoh recycle her unwanted presents"...

Just one of the reasons why nowadays, an invitation to someone's wedding is called "Red Bomb". Why ? I mean, a wedding is supposed to be a happy occassion for everyone. But it has become some sort of economic measure. "I have to give ang bao proportionately to the price of the restaurant." And wedding couples count money they collect from ang baos to see if they recouped their losses or not.

Whatever happened to a simple wedding to pronouce your love, if you do not have the money to splurge on a big party ?

I am not pointing fingers only at materialistic-capitalistic culture. The Chinese, Indians, all have elaborate weddings and parent's talk about "face", about making it grandier than any of their relatives' wedding.

All these kind of turned me off festivals like Christmas and functions like weddings.
Maybe because I know that I will not be having any weddings, thus I will not "earn back" whatever I spent on my friends. All the jokes of "if give only $50 ang bao, put him at the table near the toilet" are not helping.

And I remembered an episode in "Sex and the City". One of Carrie's friend refused to pay Carrie for a pair of expensive shoes that was lost at her house, saying she will not pay for Carrie's extravagent lifestyle. Carrie than complaint about Singles paying for the lifestyle of the Married. Other people "pay" for the wedding, other people pay for children's baby shower, birthday, graduation, etc etc.

So the question becomes, why do we have to pay for your decisions to have many children, when I am trying to avoid having children of my own ?

And how do I avoid spending all these money that I am not willing to spend, and yet maintain a sincere friendship with you ? Do I have to buy these friendship with money ?