What if your birthday lasted for months?
We celebrate 1 day a year and let the other 364 slip by. Here’s what the research says about spreading the love out, and how to make a birthday last.
Eli3 min read
The Mad Hatter was onto something. He may have been dancing around in Wonderland off his rocker, but what he was celebrating is food for thought.
We’re alive for all 365 days of the year, yet we only celebrate 1 of them. The other 364 are unbirthdays, and they come and go mostly without a peep.
There are good reasons we don’t throw a party every day. It’d be exhausting, for starters. But mostly, a birthday works because it’s rare: it’s the one day a year when everyone who loves you gets together, for you, at the same time.
Your mom, your neighbor, your dog and your oldest friend, all willing to spend time and thought for you. That’s a huge stack of social capital.
Until now, all that value got spent in one day and turned into a beautiful memory. At WithLuv we turn a single day into a gift that keeps paying dividends over and over again.
We want birthdays (and other occasions) to be used to create a year filled with positive moments between you and your core community.
What the research says
We get used to good things fast. Psychologists call it hedonic adaptation: the first birthday text is amazing, and by the 30th, they start to blur.
The fix is surprisingly simple: space things out. In a 2008 study in the Journal of Marketing Research, Leif Nelson and Tom Meyvis found that breaking up a pleasant experience made people enjoy it more. Pausing resets your brain and makes the next thing feel better.
On the flip side, a 2018 study found that people who write messages consistently underestimate how powerful their words are and overestimate how awkward it would feel.
A 2022 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found the same pattern with simply reaching out: people undervalue how much a check-in means to the friend who gets it.
Clearly, there’s a lot left on the table for us to reach out and express positive things to the people in our lives.
How to make a birthday last for months
Say your birthday is in October.
You wake up in the morning to a text prompting you to open a digital card filling up with messages, pictures, and videos from friends all wishing you happy birthday.
You blow out the candles, and before you know it, it’s a week later and you’re back at work, sweating to meet a client deadline.
As you get home, your phone buzzes. It’s your first WithLuv postcard, and it’s from a childhood friend with a photo from when you were both kids. A little shot of joy to end the day.
In November, a voice note from your dad arrives, reminding you how proud he is of you.
The postcards keep coming. One even has a gift attached: a hot chocolate, perfect for the winter day it arrives on. Each one arrives on its own, with time to respond. You read it twice. You screenshot it. You text back… or don’t.
Your birthday ends sometime in May.
Make someone’s birthday last
Someone you love has a birthday coming up.
Start a drop, invite the people who love them too, and let their birthday stretch out over months. WithLuv is free to use.
They’ll get a great day. Then they’ll get a text in February and remember, all over again, how many people are glad they exist.