If you want to have many birthdays, live in Italy. Together with Japan, Italy boasts the longest life span in the world. Thirty-six paid vacation days a year and the Mediterranean diet are probably partly responsible. Frequent art-filled walks and friendly piazza talks may also have something to do with it. Italy might not be the land of eternal youth, but it might just be the land of prolonged youth if you play your birthdaycards right.
On the whole, Italians turn a year older without making too many waves. As far as I can see, there are several reasons for this. Firstly, most people have the habit of easing into their new year as if they were lowering themselves very slowly into an unheated pool. Aging is a one step at a time process designed to avoid the shock of a headfirst dive. Indeed, an Italian will almost always begin saying their new age months before they actually have their birthday. In fact, when an Italian asks you how old you are, what they really want to know is the age you will be by the end of the year. In this country, if you turn thirty on the second of November, you will have probably said goodbye to your twenties as early as April.
Another reason that Italians take birthdays in stride lies in the virtue of their language. My friend Donatella explained it to me one day. “In English, you are forced to speak about age using the unfortunate question, ‘How old are you?’ It’s not at all reasonable that even a child born last year be tagged old. With all the politically-correct language zealots in your country, you’d think someone would have modified that phrase. Being “old” so early is detrimental to the psyche. The Italian form of the question,” my friend continued, “has none of the same ominous implications. Quanti anni hai, How many years do you have? Makes years sound like prized possessions that have to be earned.” To Donatella, there was a pleasantness in the question, as if someone were asking how many baseball cards you’ve collected or how many glass marbles you’ve stowed in your treasure jar. The more years you have, of course, the wealthier you are.
Even the Italian answer to the anni question is much more sophisticated than its English-language equivalent. “Quanti anni hai?” you may ask. “I’m in the Class of ’72,” will be the veiled reply. In Italy, this is how most people will get around saying their age. Unfortunately, you are expected to do your own math, and if you’re like me, you’ll seldom bother. I’d rather it remain a mystery than actually have to do subtraction in my head. But if you are a natural mathematician and have no aversion to simple arithmetic, it may help you to know that “Class of ‘72” does not stand for the year that person graduated from school. Their “class” refers to the year of their birth.
But there is one more reason why years in Italy fly by with grace and ease. And that is, when it’s your birthday, you’re expected to give rather than get. As Italians see it, you are the one who should be the happiest about your own birth. Therefore, it’s logical that you be held responsible for most of the celebrating. In Italy, there’s no sense of self-importance attached to blatantly making a big to-do about your own birthday. You are allowed, even expected, to bounce down the hall greeting every colleague you meet by saying, “Oggi compio gli anni, today I fulfil my years.”
Certainly, the use of fulfil here implies some sense of duty or obligation. It’s up to you to make the world a happier place, at least on that one day a year that belongs to you.
So bring in cream puffs for your colleagues. Take your friends for prosecco in the piazza. And if you go out to eat be the one to treat and not the one to be treated. Fulfil your year the Italian way, because it is said that to be giving is the best way to stay forever young.
