ကိုကြီးဇော် ( မုန်တိုင်း )

                      ေမြးေန႕ပြဲမ်ား က်င္းပေသာအခါ ေမြးေန႕ကိတ္ေပၚတြင္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္ထြန္းေသာဓေလ့မွာ  သိပၸံအျမင္ သိပၸံသေဘာတရားတို႕ႏွင့္ သက္ဆိုင္ျခင္းလည္းမရွိပါ။

                    အဂၤလိပ္လူမ်ဳိးတို႕က ေမြးေန႕ကိတ္ေပၚတြင္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္ထြန္းေပးျခင္းသည္ ေမြးေန႕ရွင္ကို ဂုဏ္ျပဳရာေရာက္သည္။ ေနာင္လာမည့္ အသက္တစ္ႏွစ္တာအတြက္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္အလင္းက ကံေကာင္းျခင္းလက္ေဆာင္မ်ားကို ယူေဆာင္လာႏုိင္လိမ့္မည္ဟု ယံုၾကည္ၾက ပါသည္။

                  ေမြးေန႕ကိတ္ေပၚတြင္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္ထြန္းေသာ ဓေလ့ကို ေရွးေခတ္ဂရိလူမ်ဳိးတို႕က စတင္ခဲ့သည္ဟု ေလ့လာေတြ႕ရွိရပါသည္။ ဂရိတို႕ ကိုးကြယ္ေသာ ဇုနတ္မင္းႀကီးႏွင့္ ၄င္း၏ၾကင္ယာေတာ္ လီတို တို႕တြင္ အျမႊာညီအစ္မႏွစ္ဦးရွိေလသည္။ တစ္ဦးမွာ အပိုလို နတ္သမီး ျဖစ္ၿပီး က်န္တစ္ဦးမွာ အာတီးမစ္နတ္သမီး ျဖစ္ေလသည္။ အပိုလိုနတ္သမီးသည္ လကိုေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေသာ တာ၀န္ကို ယူရၿပီး အာတီးမစ္ နတ္သမီးသည္ အမဲလိုက္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ ကေလးသူငယ္မ်ားကို ေစာင့္ေရွာက္သည္ဟု ယံုၾကည္ၾကပါသည္။ ထို႕ေၾကာင့္ အာတီးမစ္ နတ္သမီး၏ရုပ္ပံုတြင္ ေလးႏွင့္ျမားကို ထည့္သြင္းေရးဆြဲေလ့ရွိပါသည္။

               အဆိုပါ အာတီးမစ္နတ္သမီးကို ကိုးကြယ္သူမ်ားသည္ လစဥ္ လဆန္း ၆ ရက္ေန႕တိုင္းတြင္ သူမအတြက္ ျပဳလုပ္ထားေသာ နတ္ကြန္း၌ ကိတ္မုန္႕မ်ားကို သြားေရာက္လွဴကာ ပူေဇာ္ေလ့ရွိၾကပါသည္။ ကိတ္မုန္႕မ်ားကို အ၀ိုင္းပံုျပဳလုပ္ထားၾကၿပီး ကိတ္မုန္႕ေပၚတြင္ ဖေယာင္းတုိင္ေသးေသးေလးမ်ားကို ထြန္းညွိပူေဇာ္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။

                   အဆိုပါအေလ့အထသည္ အလယ္ေခတ္တိုင္ေအာင္ ပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႕လာခဲ့ၿပီး ထိုေခတ္က ဂ်ာမန္လယ္သမားႀကီးမ်ားသည္ ေမြးေန႕ကိတ္မ်ားတြင္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္ထြန္းညွိၾကေၾကာင္း သိရွိရပါသည္။ သူတို႕သည္ ေမြးေန႕ရွင္ ကေလးငယ္မႏုိးခင္ ေမြးေန႕ကိတ္ေပၚတြင္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္ ထြန္းညွိထားၾကပါသည္။ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္ကိုလည္း ကေလး၏ လက္ရွိအသက္ထက္ တစ္ႏွစ္ေပါင္းၿပီး ထြန္းေပးထားရပါသည္။ ဥပမာ ကေလးအသက္ ၆ ႏွစ္ျဖစ္ပါက ဖေယာင္းတိုင္ ၇ တိုင္ ထြန္းထားေပးရပါသည္။ ၄င္းဖေယာင္းတိုင္မ်ားကို အျခားအစားအေသာက္မ်ား စားသံုးၿပီးမွ ေနာက္ဆံုးၾကမွ မီးမႈတ္ရပါသည္။

                       ဖေယာင္းတိုင္မီးမႈတ္ရာတြင္လည္း တစ္ႀကိမ္တည္းႏွင့္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္အားလံုးၿငိမ္းေအာင္ မီးမႈတ္ႏုိင္မွသာ ဆုေတာင္းျပည့္သည္ဟု ယံုၾကည္ၾကပါသည္။ ထို႕အျပင္ မိမိလိုခ်င္ေသာဆုေတာင္းကို အသံထြက္ေတာင္းလိုက္လွ်င္ ဆုေတာင္းမျပည့္ျဖစ္တတ္သည္ဟုလည္း ယံုၾကည္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။ ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ဂ်ာမန္တို႕၏ အဆိုပါေမြးေန႕ကိတ္အေလ့အထသည္ တျဖည္းျဖည္းပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႕လာၿပီး ေမြးေန႕မ်ားတြင္ ေမြးေန႕ကိတ္ႏွင့္ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္သည္ ေခတ္စားလာခဲ့ပါသည္။
Ref::::http://www.tokenz.com/history-of-birthday-cake.html
Origin of Birthday Cakes dates back to ancient times but the cake of then was very different from what we have today. The word ‘cake’ is said to have coined as early as 13th century and is said to have derived from ‘kaka’- an Old Norse word.

Definition of Birthday Cake
In Western culture Birthday Cake is defined as a pastry or dessert served to a person on his or her birthday. Birthday cakes are usually decorated with person’s name and carry a message of congratulations. Candles equal to the number of year’s a person has been alive are also placed on the cake. There is also a tradition to place one extra candle to bring good luck. Birthday cakes are usually spongy and the most popular flavour in cakes is chocolate.

Birthday Cake History
History of Birthday Cake can be traced back to the ancient Greeks who made round or moon shaped honey cakes or bread and took it to the temple of Artemis -the Goddess of Moon. Some scholars, however, believe that the tradition of Birthday cake started in Germany in Middle Ages. Sweetened bread dough was given the shape of baby Jesus in swaddling cloth and was used to commemorate his birthday. This special birthday cake later reemerged in Germany as a Kinderfest or the birthday celebrations of a young child. Germans also baked another special kind of a cake called Geburtstagorten as it was baked in layers. This was sweeter that the coarse and bread like cake that were usually made at that time.

Why is Birthday Cake Round?
In earlier times, Birthday cakes were mostly round in shape. Scholars associate religious beliefs and technical compulsions for the same. Greeks offered round shape cake to the Goddess of Moon - Artemis as it signified moon. They even placed candles on the cake to make the cake glow like the moon.

Some scholars opine that cake in the ancient world has association with the annual cycles. Round shapes of cakes were preferred as these represented the cyclical nature of life. Most specifically, the sun and moon.

Technical reason given for the roundness of the cake is that most cakes we know off advanced from the bread. In ancient times breads and cakes were made by hand. Typically, these were fashioned into round balls and baked on hearthstones or in low, shallow pans. Hence, these naturally relaxed into round shapes. With the progress of times baking pans of various shapes were developed and today we see cakes in imaginative shapes and sizes.

Tradition of Putting Candles on Birthday Cake
Tradition of placing candles on Birthday cake is attributed to early Greeks, who used place lit candles on cakes to make them glow like the moon. Greeks used to take the cake to the temple of Artemis-the Goddess of Moon. Some scholars say that candles were placed on the cake because people believe that the smoke of the candle carried their wishes and prayers to Gods who lived in the skies. Others believe that the custom originated in Germany where people used to place a large candle in the centre of the cake to symbolize ‘the light of life’.

In present times too, people place candles on Birthday cakes and a silent wish is made before blowing out the candle. It is believed that blowing out all candles in one breath means the wish will come true and the person with enjoy good luck in the coming year. Some also smear out the name of the person before slicing of the cake to bring good luck.Read more