Birth Day

Birth Day is a holiday to celebrate the start of a new year. Seen as a time of renewal and rebirth, those who celebrate it often feast and exchange gifts with friends and family alike.

Traditions
The day starts with cleaning the ashes from the previous day, see Death Day. The ashes are placed in a pile in socially designated areas, usually outside of forests or scattered across crop fields, so the ashes may encourage plant growth.

In more densely populated areas the ashes are gathered in Death Day baskets and disposed by community volunteers.

After the last of remnants of Death Day celebrations are cleaned away preparations for a large feast begins around mid-morning. There are two parts the feast, the first involves gathering at home with family, but before the feast may begin loaves of bread are offered to be broken to the person sitting to the left of the offeree as a gesture of good luck for the coming year.

Once the bread has been broken the feast has officially begun and everyone may eat. There are often multiple courses involved in the feast, but after they have been finished the youngest generation of the family is responsible for clearing the table. The remaining family members generally do not leave the table until most of the table have been cleared.

With the table cleared gifts are exchanged among family members. Gifts come in many forms however there are a few traditional gifts associated with the holiday.

One gift may be giving a hand carved totem to resemble a memory both the giver and receiver shared in the previous year, another gift may also be an item with a gemstone related to the receiver’s birth month.

After gifts are given to family members only then can gifts be given and received from other sources.

Trivia

 * Birth Day was the first officially recorded holiday in Astorian history.
 * After the invention of paper press the Earth Kingdom added the tradition of sending Birth Day paper folds to distant family members through various messengers.