"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
"
— Robert Frost

"You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."
— Bob Hope

"I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn't. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I'm doing by how many people remember; it's like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up. "
— Lorrie Moore (Anagrams)

"Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer.

Glen had been born on the day after Christmas.

"My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained.

But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers."
— Augusten Burroughs (You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas)