Birthday Spankings?

Jadon is turning 4 years old today. Seriously. 4. It’s hard to believe it’s already been 4 years since he made the escape. He doesn’t seem a day older than 3 years and 364 days. It’s an exciting day with all kind of fun and traditions, but one tradition I’ve never understood is that of birthday spankings.

What exactly is the point of spanking someone on his birthday? Where did that weird little ritual begin? On one of the happiest days of a child’s year, we choose to perform an act that, on every other day of the year, is used as a form of punishment. What a weird, mixed message. Are birthday spankings actually supposed to convince the person having a birthday to stop getting older? Has it ever worked? It’s like we get more frustrated with their aging every year, so every year we add on another spanking. You could make a killing if you could figure out a way to administer birthday spankings in such a way that it would actually convince a person to stop aging.

At what point should birthday spankings cease? Don’t you eventually have to admit that it’s a lost cause and realize that no amount of spankings are going to keep someone from getting older? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be giving birthday spankings to 93 year old people – partly because I’d probably be sore the next day (some form of tennis/spanking elbow) and partly because that’s just weird.