“
Birthday marks the beginning of a new year, new hopes and new dreams! So, we should never blow out the candle before cutting the cake on such a day. Let the candle burn! Let it spread light everywhere!
”
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Ziaul Haque
“
Before she cut her birthday cake, she cast a wish, then blew the candles out from his eyes.
”
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Anthony Liccione
“
Celebration is the sparkle in the eye of the one who glows. It is the song that plays in the house of freedom. Celebration is the dance of life, it’s the one dancing to the drumbeat of the heart, it’s your birthday cake, it’s you blowing out the trick candles, it’s you delighting in the fire of life.
”
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Tehya Sky (A Ceremony Called Life: When Your Morning Coffee Is as Sacred as Holy Water)
“
In her mind, her Dad was like a knight taking a birthday cake to a dragon and inviting it to blow out the candles.
”
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Nate Hamon (Terra Dark)
“
For Swan's birthday, Calla made pineapple upside-down cake, which is not the kind of cad you put candles on. So there was nothing to blow and make wishes on. Nobody missed the candles, because when you're eating pineapple upside-down cake, there is nothing much left to wish for
”
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Jenny Wingfield (The Homecoming of Samuel Lake)
“
When I turn eight, I don’t get any birthday cards or a cake like the other kids in the orphanage—I sit under the bed with a drawing of my spider and imagine a crowd of people singing happy birthday to me, and we blow out candles that I draw. I close my eyes and make a wish. I wish someone would choose me.
”
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Leigh Rivers (Little Liar (The Web of Silence Duet, #2))
“
I turn to Peter and say, “I can’t believe you did this.”
“I baked that cake myself,” he brags. “Box, but still.” He takes off his jacket and pulls a lighter out of his jacket pocket and starts lighting the candles. Gabe pulls out a lit candle and helps him. Then Peter hops his butt on the table and sits down, his legs hanging off the edge. “Come on.”
I look around. “Um…”
That’s when I hear the opening notes of “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. My hands fly to my cheeks. I can’t believe it. Peter’s recreating the end scene from Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan sit on a table with a birthday cake in between them. When we watched the movie a few months ago, I said it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. And now he’s doing it for me.
“Hurry up and get up there before all the candles melt, Lara Jean,” Chris calls out.
Darrell and Gabe help hoist me onto the table, careful not to set my dress on fire. Peter says, “Okay, now you look at me adoringly, and I lean forward like this.”
Chris comes forward and puffs out my skirt a bit. “Roll up your sleeve a little higher,” she instructs Peter, looking from her phone to us. Peter obeys, and she nods. “Looks good, looks good.” Then she runs back to her spot and starts to snap. It takes no effort on my part at all to look at Peter adoringly tonight.
When I blow out the candles and make my wish, I wish that I will always feel for Peter the way I do right now.
”
”
Jenny Han (Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #3))
“
And tell your mama I’ll come later, as soon as I can. Tell her to wait for me to have dinner, because she has a cake for you. It’s your birthday today. I wanted to show you everything today, but she stopped me. She said to me, “Bit by bit, Francisco.” And she was right: bit by bit. But I’m tired now. Look at me lying here. You go, but stay in the shade. Let me rest in my shade. Run so you reach the cake before the candles go out—they don’t last long. You’d better blow them out, blow hard, because I can’t now. I’ll stay to water the trees, soon as I can, because if you don’t irrigate them as soon as they’re planted, the roots don’t take. The roots are important, Francisco. Water the roots. Come on, Francisco, we’re a long way from home. Run now, or the candles will go out. I’ll watch you go, Francisco. Go on. Where are you? Have you gone?
”
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Sofía Segovia (The Murmur of Bees)
“
My son was something of a disciple of flying things. On his bedroom wall were posters of fighter planes and wild birds. A model of a helicopter was chandeliered to his ceiling. His birthday cake, which sat before me on the picnic table, was decorated with a picture of a rocket ship - a silver-white missile with discharging thrusters. I had been hoping that the baker would place a few stars in the frosting as well (the cake in the catalog was dotted with yellow candy sequins), but when I opened the box I found that they were missing. So this is what I did: as Joshua stood beneath the swing set, fishing for something in his pocket, I planted his birthday candles deep in the cake. I pushed them in until each wick was surrounded by only a shallow bracelet of wax. Then I called the children over from the swing set. They came, tearing up divots in the grass.
We sang happy birthday as I held a match to the candles.
Joshua closed his eyes.
"Blow out the stars," I said, and his cheeks rounded with air.
”
”
Kevin Brockmeier (The United States of McSweeney's: Ten Years of Lucky Mistakes and Accidental Classics)
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The earliest birthday I remember is my fourth; I remember blowing out the candles on my cake, the thrill of tearing the wrapping paper off the presents. There’s no video of the event, but there are snapshots in the family album, and they are consistent with what I remember. In fact, I suspect I no longer remember the day itself. It’s more likely that I manufactured the memory when I was first shown the snapshots, and over time, I’ve imbued it with the emotion I imagine I felt that day. Little by little, over repeated instances of recall, I’ve created a happy memory for myself.
”
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Ted Chiang (The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling (Exhalation))
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She fell asleep within minutes, unaware that the rain that had been falling since evening had turned to sleet, or that the roads were becoming impassable.
As she slept, she began to dream, but instead of a continuous scene, it consisted of images flashing through her mind, like looking at old pictures in an album.
Cat was sitting at the kitchen table. Her mother was standing beside her, laughing as she set a birthday cake in front of her. There were four candles on her cake, and her daddy was taking a picture.
“Smile,” he’d said.
She looked up just as the flash went off.
She was still blinking from the flash when the image shifted. It was cold. The blowing wind burned her skin. She was at a cemetery, staring down at a small, flat marker. Cat couldn’t read, but somehow she knew it bore hermother’s name. She could hear her father crying. It scared her worse than the fact that her mother had gone away.
“Daddy…where did she go?”
“Heaven.”
“Is it far?”
“Yes.”
“Can we go, too?”
She never heard his answer, because the image shifted again. This time, she was being led through a long series of hallways. The smell of orange oil from wood polish burned her nose. The sound of her footsteps echoed on the tiled floors. Yesterday she’d been in the hospital. She’d asked to go home. But someone had told her she couldn’t go home because there was no one left to take care of her. The horror of that knowledge had frightened her so much that she’d been afraid to ask what came next.
She walked through an open door as a woman said her name. The woman took her by the hand, and they walked away. She couldn’t see the woman’s face. She never remembered the faces, and it didn’t matter, because they never stayed the same.
”
”
Sharon Sala (Nine Lives (Cat Dupree, #1))
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All rituals are grounded in repetition and rigidly fixed action sequences.17 But they differ from habits in one important way. Rituals lack a direct, immediate reward. Instead, we have to invent a meaning and impose it on them. We lift our glasses to toast, blow out candles on a birthday cake, and wear caps and gowns at graduation. The act of standing silently for a song, singing while candles burn, or wearing a ceremonial costume acts as feedback, reinforcing our belief that something meaningful is taking place—an act of respect for our country, a celebration of another year, or an educational accomplishment.
”
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Wendy Wood (Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick)
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But that’s the thing I’ve only recently come to understand about birthdays. They’re not about presents or streamers. They’re not about parties or pictures or petite pastel candles on your cake. They’re about having a brief sense of hope. For that one day, we’re able to close the door on our mistakes and cling to the false idea that we’ll approach the next year wiser. We make wishes. We blow out candles. We tell ourselves this will be our year.
”
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Angela Brown (Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time)
“
No! Please no," she feels the cool metal
of the handcuffs again. "Please, I'm
Madison, I'm Madison!"
Her arms lock into place above her head.
She jerks her body, pain snapping at her
muscles.
"You can stay like this for the day." He
rises from the bed, bends down, and
blows out the candles on her birthday
cake. "Night, night, Rosie."
"No!"
He opens the door, letting a stream of
sunlight into the room.
"Please don't leave me here, please!"
And then the door closes, and the
sunlight is gone.
”
”
Kay Botha (Hush)
“
When my firstborn turned six months old, I decided that this milestone was definitely worth celebrating. And what started as a one-off event quickly became a family tradition: For my kids' half birthdays I make half a cake (it looks like someone just cut a cake down the middle and made the other half disappear), and we sing every other syllable of the "Happy Birthday" song (I'm really good at complicating things, and singing only the first half of the song seemed unfair to the second half). We don't do gifts or a big bash, and we don't blow out candles and make wishes, because wishes should be made only full throttle. We just end the day with a little celebration after dinner, something kind of silly and fun. And cake. Because everything in life should end with sugar.
”
”
Kristina Kuzmic (Hold On, But Don't Hold Still)
“
We find a restaurant and order one martini and two steaks. “It’s my mother’s birthday,” Simone tells the waiter. “She’s turning one hundred. Can we have free cake?” She turns to me. “You should have ordered her a salad. You’re out of shape, old lady.” She’s having fun criticizing our mother in front of her face. I lift my dress and show her the thighs. I grab a handful and shake. “Please put those away. I would like to eat again.” Mother craves rye. Mother craves the men at the bar who throw soldierlike nods. The heaviness in mother’s bones spreads. She has to go to bed soon. The dark voice says, rest, idiot. “Mom and I both have the slut gene,” I say. “She’s pulled toward every man.” “I don’t enjoy that thought.” Simone discards the potatoes from her plate onto a napkin she slides over to me, a leftover tradition from childhood that pleases me. Later, I blow out a sputtering candle on a cupcake.
”
”
Marie-Helene Bertino (Parakeet)
“
Yule log (the cake kind), cover it with melted chocolate and sprinkle with icing sugar. Place one candle on the Yule log for each of the celebrants (birthday candles work the best for this). Each celebrant then lights the candle as they make a wish. Once everyone has made a wish, the celebrants blow out the candles and eat the Yule log. Yule
”
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Jo Green (Queer Paganism: A Spirituality That Embraces All Identities)
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After blowing out the candle in one puff once the song was over, she took a careful bite. He waited for her to spit it back out, but she actually swallowed, then took a second bite. "Try it," she said around the mouthful. "It's pretty good."
Sailor figured she was pulling his leg, but it was her birthday after all. He took a bite. And felt his eyes widen. "I'm a culinary genius." Actually, the cake was chewy and dense, but there was no salt instead of sugar, which, in his book made this a win.
But even better was seeing Ísa smile with open happiness.
”
”
Nalini Singh (Cherish Hard (Hard Play, #1))
“
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. ITS CITIZENS ARE DRUNK ON WONDER. Consider the case of Sarai.1 She is in her golden years, but God promises her a son. She gets excited. She visits the maternity shop and buys a few dresses. She plans her shower and remodels her tent . . . but no son. She eats a few birthday cakes and blows out a lot of candles . . . still no son. She goes through a decade of wall calendars . . . still no son. So Sarai decides to take matters into her own hands. (“Maybe God needs me to take care of this one.”) She convinces Abram that time is running out. (“Face it, Abe, you ain’t getting any younger, either.”) She commands her maid, Hagar, to go into Abram’s tent and see if he needs anything. (“And I mean ‘anything’!”) Hagar goes in a maid. She comes out a mom. And the problems begin. Hagar is haughty. Sarai is jealous. Abram is dizzy from the dilemma. And God calls the baby boy a “wild donkey”—an appropriate name for one born out of stubbornness and destined to kick his way into history. It isn’t the cozy family Sarai expected. And it isn’t a topic Abram and Sarai bring up very often at dinner. Finally, fourteen years later, when Abram is pushing a century of years and Sarai ninety . . . when Abram has stopped listening to Sarai’s advice, and Sarai has stopped giving it . . . when the wallpaper in the nursery is faded and the baby furniture is several seasons out of date . . . when the topic of the promised child brings sighs and tears and long looks into a silent sky . . . God pays them a visit and tells them they had better select a name for their new son. Abram and Sarai have the same response: laughter. They laugh partly because it is too good to happen and partly because it might. They laugh because they have given up hope, and hope born anew is always funny before it is real. They laugh at the lunacy of it all. Abram looks over at Sarai—toothless and snoring in her rocker, head back and mouth wide open, as fruitful as a pitted prune and just as wrinkled. And he cracks up. He tries to contain it, but he can’t. He has always been a sucker for a good joke. Sarai is just as amused. When she hears the news, a cackle escapes before she can contain it. She mumbles something about her husband’s needing a lot more than what he’s got and then laughs again. They laugh because that is what you do when someone says he can do the impossible. They laugh a little at God, and a lot with God—for God is laughing too. Then, with the smile still on his face, he gets busy doing what he does best—the unbelievable.
”
”
Max Lucado (The Applause of Heaven: Discover the Secret to a Truly Satisfying Life)