Holiday celebrations are not a zero-sum game

Due to a clerical error, my birthday was wrongly recorded, resulting in some people celebrating my birthday using the date of the lunar calendar and others the date of the solar calendar. I have tried to clarify and correct this in the past. But now I am in my mostly unglamorous middle-age life, I have given up trying to correct people, since I figure I can use all the celebrations I get. They just provide an excuse for having a good time with friends and family.

This segues to another topic, one that seems to vex some Chinese: Should we embrace Western holidays or Chinese ones? This question reappears every time a Western holiday is observed. Some of these are religious holidays such as Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Then there are Valentine's Day, Halloween, Mother's Day, and Father's Day, which are also gaining popularity.

Some argue that such holidays should not be celebrated as China has its own Valentine's Day on July 7 in the lunar calendar and its own equivalent to Thanksgiving, the Mid-autumn Festival. As an ancient culture, we have days for celebrating our ancestors, Tomb Sweeping Festival; the elderly, Double Ninth Day; teachers on Sept 10; workers, on May 1; women on March 8, and children on June 1. There is a holiday for almost everyone, even the dead on lunar July 15 in many regions, everyone except perhaps middle-aged men, which explains why I no longer mind people celebrating my birthday several times a year.