Why Do We Put Candles On Birthday Cakes?

It is a long-standing tradition, passed down through the generations, to put candles on birthday cakes. If you are really lucky, maybe your friends or family even treated you to some ‘comedy’ candles that wouldn’t blow out, thus ensuring you huffed and puffed in vain all over your beautifully iced confection, to a round of claps and cheers.

But where did this strange ritual begin? Like many things which have become engrained into our culture, the origins are open to interpretation, but it seems likely that the ancient Greeks sowed the seeds. At weddings and special birthdays, it was customary to serve a ‘cake’ made from discs of flour and nuts, sweetened with honey.

According to the historian Marietta Rusinek, the Greeks placed candles on cakes to honour the goddess of the hunt and the moon, Artemis, on the sixth day of every lunar month. The cycles of the moon have always been associated with fertility, and the glow of the candles is thought to represent moonlight.

Another theory goes that pre-Christian societies used candles as a way of representing an altar on a cake, to ward off evil spirits that were thought to visit people on their birthdays. A more widely known tradition can be traced back to 18th century Germany, where Kinderfest was an established birthday celebration for children, complete with cake and candles.

However, birthdays weren’t much celebrated among ordinary folk in the 18th and 19th centuries, because the ingredients to make a multi-tiered cake complete with fillings and a decorative topping were expensive, not to mention time consuming for a mother who would typically have four or five little ones under her feet and a household to run.

As ready-made cakes and cheaper ingredients became available during the twentieth century, the tradition of serving an exquisitely decorated celebration treat became more popular in many areas of the world.

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