Hafling Birthday

A traditional Halfling birthday is celebrated much like a Human birthday, but with more focus on food.
The day begins with the family making breakfast, traditionally themed around red currants. The breakfast generally consists of tea, scones and yoghurt. The tea is made of local herbs with a lot of honey mixed into it and currant placed floating on top. The scones are freshly baked together with creme cheese and currant marmalade. The youghurt is unsweetened but is eaten with sugared currants. The celebrated is woken on bed and served the breakfast, with everyone else sharing the enjoyment and food after the celebrated haven taken the first bite.
After everybody has gotten dressed and taken a short stroll it is time for the next meal. Friends to the celebrated comes with rye bread, whipped butter, honey and jerky. During warm times pear cider is drunken to it and during the winter warm pear juice is drunken instead. This meal varies a lot among different friend circles and other common variations of this meal is serving pear slices to the bread, changing any pear for apple or drinking pear brandy instead of cider.
For lunch the family prepares a big meal for everybody in the village, or anyone knowing the celebrated in a larger town. The meal has generally been prepared for a whole week beforehand. A variety of halfing meals is included here, differing in type from family to family, but always having in common the abundance to choose from.
During the lunch gifts are placed in the front hall. Gifts are not wrapped unless they contain something out of the ordinary. One can expect to see two or three wrapped gifts, from close family, friends or partner, among the about fifty gifts given at a halfling party. Common gifts are food as pickled vegetables, jam or cheese. Finer, but still common gifts, are hand made items of clothing, jewelry or tools. After three hours of eating, talking, having seconds, eating desert and drinking hot drinks it is gift time. The celebrated reads out the giver of each gift and thanks for them. Lastly any wrapped gift is opened, which everybody has waited with anticipation for.
When all guests have left, and the dishing is done, the celebrated prepares the dinner as a thank you to the family and friends that has made the day possible. Of course this is only the general structure of the halfling birthday and a couple of the later meals are left out, as those do not follow any form, but rather the hunger and cravings of the halfings.

Primary Related Location

The Halfling Lands