The Current - They celebrate birthdays when it’s not their birthday

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Meet people who blow out the candles on a different day than the one they were born on. Some hate the time of year their birthday falls. Others are celebrating a life change so big it feels like a rebirth. And for one woman, it's all about the vibes.

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From CBC's Uncover, the expert witness. available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. I'm joined now in studio by one of the current's producers, Kate Swogger. Kate, good morning. Good morning, Matt. So I've been away, and I think I missed your birthday earlier this week, so happy belated birthday.

Thank you, but I have a confession to make. June 1st is not actually the day I was. was born. It's not? Well, it's not when I was born. I was born in late November. So that was when I celebrated my birthday for about 50 years or so. Okay. But a few years back, I just decided to change the day I celebrate my birthday. Are you allowed to do that? I don't know what the rules are, but I didn't know that you could do that. I can and I did. Okay. Not legally. But I just told my family and friends, I don't want to celebrate in November anymore. My birthday is now June 1st. And why would you do that? I just hate that time of year. It's late November. It's gross. It's gray. There's no beautiful blanket of

snow. Noah Kahn. He wrote a whole song about how awful that time of year is. And I know there are probably worse times of year to have a birthday. You know, I feel bad for the Christmas babies. But I have a colleague. You might know him. He lives in Saskatchewan. And he has the exact same birthday as me. And he told me when he was eight, his friends bought him a snow shovel for his birthday. which made me sad and traumatized him for the rest of his life. So I picked June 1st because it's warm, the days are long, and I can have a backyard party. Well, good for you. Happy belated birthday. I'm going to still say happy belated birthday because I missed the first of June.

Thank you, but there's more. Oh. I thought I was the only one to do this, but it turns out I'm not. There are other people who do this, some for better reasons than me, and I've met some of them, and I want to tell you about them today. First person I want you to meet is Kathy Braddock. She's from Ottawa, and like me, she felt she was dealt a bad hand when it comes to birthdays. She was born in early January.

Well, when I turned 40 years old, I decided that I had been celebrating birthdays in a very substandard way for all of my life. Everyone had excuses because they were all on a diet from Christmas. They'd been to so many Christmas parties. they didn't feel like partying anymore. Many of them were on their dry January run and none of them had any money left to go out for dinner. So it really wasn't ever a celebration. So when I was approaching my 40th birthday,

I decided that my birthday present to myself was to change my birthday. And so when did she move her birthday to? She also chose a summer birthday, August 8th, for the patio weather. And another reason she wanted to make the switch growing up in Saskatchewan, this is a theme here. She was part of a Prairie family, six kids, and often her mom would say to her on her birthday, they didn't have a lot of money. Well, your Christmas gift is your birthday gift.

We just spend a little extra on that. Which is hard for a kid, right? I'm sure it is, yeah. But changing your birthday is a big deal. So how did people in her life react to her saying, you know what, I would like to celebrate my birthday at a different time? Well, it varied, and there was a bit of eye-rolling. Some of my brothers and sisters never acknowledged that my birthday was changed. I get cards in January and, you know, no acknowledgement in August,

or they'd conveniently forget both birthdays. But also, you know, I'm a fairly serious person, and my family and friends, some of them couldn't understand. Isn't that a bit frivolous and self-servous? to just say, you know, you want to celebrate yourself at a different time of year. Can you really change your birthday? But anyway, I would say, you know, mom was wrong about so many things. I think maybe she had me on the wrong date anyway, so I might as well celebrate in August.

Your family can be complicated. Did she, in the face of that eye rolling, stick to the August birthday? Well, you know what, Matt, she did change her birthday back to early January. What? Well, she did it eventually because she wanted to. It was on her own terms. She'd had 20 years of August birthdays, and it was a good run, but she was approaching 60 and about to retire. And she thought, you know what, why not have a January birthday?

Because now I can go away and be on holiday in a nice warm place. Not stuck in the cold. Right. And so I think Kathy's committed to January for now. but I want you to meet Wendy Pernel, whose birthday it is basically a movable feast. She lives in Bozeman, Colorado, and she shares a birthday with a very close friend named Brandon. And the two of them are co-conspirators on this floating birthday concept. And I'll let her explain to you how it came about.

In our early 30s, as our birthday was approaching, I think we were at war in Iraq or something, America. Yeah. So we just were like, the weather is crappy. The news is bad. We're not ready to celebrate our birthday right now. And then a couple weeks later, we gathered for friends and family dinner and the food was excellent. And the company was fantastic. And the music was good. And we were all happy. And I turned to my friend and said, should it be our birthday tonight? And he said, yes. And so we just sort of started the tradition of, deciding when our birthday was based on our mood and the vibe and choosing a moment where we were deeply grateful to be alive. So let me get this right. Every year she and her pal decide, just they look at the calendar, they just pick a day on the calendar that feels right and that's going to be their birthday. Yes and no. It's usually around their birthday in October, but it's based on vibes. Vibes. Like my birthday was coming up and I was out of great concert and the music was perfect and I was with dear friends and we were dancing and I would turn to

them and say, I'm celebrating my birthday right now. Or another time I think I had achieved some life goals and milestones just before I turned 40. And so I turned to my girlfriends and I said, I think I want to turn 40 today. Shall we pop a cork? And so we did because it was just a good day and I felt like I'd accomplished what I'd set out to by 40. Which is a good opportunity to pop the cork. For sure. You also spoke with people who had more serious reasons for changing the birthday, right? That's right. That's right.

I spoke with Janice Gillen. She lives here in Toronto. And in 2018, she nearly died of leukemia. It was a very aggressive cancer, and her doctors told her she needed a stem cell transplant. She doesn't have any siblings or children. Those are usually the best chance for a match. so she needed to find an anonymous donor. And incredibly, she found someone who was a perfect match.

Here's what she told me about what it was like to receive those stem cells. When I was actually having the transfusion that you get when you have your bone marrow transplant, I was watching that bag of fluid and just knowing somewhere this person has donated this to save me. And I thought about that every time I was going through difficulties. because you have a lot of problems after a transplant. We have something called graft versus host disease where the new immune system starts to reject your body. So it's the opposite of an organ transplant.

And so you go through all sorts of viruses and challenges and skin inflammation. But that whole time I was thinking, wow, this person actually saved my life. My blood type even changed from an O positive to a B positive which is my donor's blood type, which is quite incredible. And so, you know, as I went through recovery, I would always think back to that person who donated so generously to me.

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Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. That's remarkable. I mean, that her blood type actually changed because of what she got from that other person. Yes, and, you know, I understood the basic concept of a transplant, but I had no idea that your blood type could change and that you basically take on this other person's immune system. and Janice said she thinks of it as the donor now being a part of her. And so it's like she's not quite the same person that she was before she had this. Exactly, which is why Janice and many other stem cell recipients celebrate a rebirth day

on the anniversary of their transplant with the party and cake. Did she ever find out who gave her the stem cells? At first she didn't know. That's pretty standard with anonymous donations. then they started exchanging anonymous letters, and two years later, they made direct contact. Janice's donor lives in Germany. Her name is Yvonne Choney, and they become fast friends. Janice even went to Germany to meet Yvonne and to celebrate her fifth re-birthday. I remember having butterflies in my stomach, and when I saw her, I just immediately ran to her.

We hugged, I cried, and she cried, and we just hung on to each other and told each other how special this relationship was. And I thanked her for saving my life. And it was a really emotional day. We say we're our new sisters and we talk about everything just like we were real sisters. I never had a sister. So Yvonne is my sister. When I met her mom, her mom said that I'm her daughter. for life. And we always call each other sisters every time we speak. And when we met again in January this past year for my real birthday, she had said, I wish we lived closer so we could even be more like sisters. So it's a really special relationship and will be for life. She said something interesting there, my real birthday. So she still celebrates what she calls her real birthday as well as her rebirth day, right? That's right. And they're different? Well, both are gatherings with loved ones and cake and decorations, but here's how Janice compares them.

My real birthday, of course, that's always special, although I'm getting older, so it gets more challenging as you get older. But I believe that my rebirth day is even more special every year. It's truly the date that a wonderful person at the time who was anonymous gave me a gift for no reason. They had no reason to do it, but they gave me a gift that literally saved my life. The doctors told me I would have passed away within five years. And so it's so special to me because it is a life or death situation and I now have this life. That's amazing. Yeah, isn't it? One other thing, Matt. She told me that she likes to have her re-birthday in August because her real birthday is in the middle of winter. This is a familiar theme in our conversation. There are a lot of people who are sick and tired of winter. Yes, that's Right. Okay. Moving on, we've got one last person I want you to meet. Her name is Natalie Moors. She lives in Arnpryor, Ontario, and she also celebrates a rebirth day than Janice. Her rebirth day is in April, and it marks the day in 2021 when she realized she was a woman and she was going to transition. Now, not every transgender person marks a rebirth day. For many who do, it celebrates the day they began hormone therapy.

but for Natalie, it's that day five years ago when she looked at herself in the mirror and had that epiphany about who she was. She'd been living as a man for four decades. She was married and had a baby son. She told her wife she was a transgender woman and she wasn't sure how she'd react. But her wife was supportive and when the one year anniversary came around, she threw Natalie a party with a cake with the trans colors. It was kind of a special day for me to mark that first year because a lot of progress had been made in that first year, but also it had to reaffirmed that I was on the right track for myself, and that epiphany wasn't just like a phase or a fleeting thing for me. So it kind of just secured that this was who I am now and the direction I was. was going on was a positive direction. So it was a pretty happy day.

She told me that it's not a rebirth in the sense of becoming a whole new person, more like marking the day her true self emerged. In the trans community, we kind of use an analogy with an egg cracking. Usually an egg is kind of already around, and the animal kind of like cracks and that matches out of the eggs. So it kind of marked breaking through my shell and allowing myself to live authentically. And so what does Natalie usually do to mark her re-birthday? Well, this year she went to what she calls a spicy dance party in Ottawa, and I'll leave that to your imagination. She's got a new community of friends, but they live in Montreal, so she decided to go on her own,

and she had a blast. Celebrating reminds her of how. how far she's come in the past five years. It hasn't always been easy. She and her wife are now separated. She says her rebirth also makes her remember that she's continuing to grow. Right now, I definitely feel young at heart. And as I reached this five-year mark

in particular, it kind of feels like a good halfway point in my transition. I never really anticipated that. It would be a quick or easy process. So it's a good way to kind of reflect and maybe dig up some old pictures and kind of see how far you've come. Definitely, it's been a roller coaster. There's been a lot of sacrifices, a lot of changes, not always for the better, but I would make the same decision a million times over. Does she still celebrate her other birthday?

She does. She says she'll probably never abandon that day because it's important for her family, for her parents. But she's somewhat seated that day to her son, who was born on her birthday and is turning seven this summer. So now it's about him. And Wendy, you remember from Colorado, with the floating birth date? She's done that same thing with a young person in her life named Violet. She and her friend Brandon, who she shares the birthday with, they call Violet their chosen niece. She's the daughter of their dear friend, and they helped out raising her when she was little, and she was born on the same day as them.

When we are together, it's really about our niece. It's not about us. When she was little on our shared birthday, I would say, what's the best birthday present I've ever gotten in my whole life? And she would say, me! And I was like, yep. That's fabulous. It is. And I'm happy to give away my late November birthday to anyone in my life who would like it. You're very generous. I know. Okay. I know I might sound like a bit of a princess claiming a June 1st birthday for myself.

But you know what? If you can't be a princess on your birthday, when can you be? Absolutely. And this switching birthdays thing, to me it's not about the ritual and the presence. It's about celebrating in the fullest sense. And I'm going to give the last word on this to Wendy because she puts it so well.

It's really about choosing those moments to just be grateful. You're with. the people you want to be with doing what you want to be doing and sharing joy and appreciation of each other. Sharing joy and appreciation of each other. Well said. Kate Swogh, happy birthday. Thank you, Matt.

Kate Swogger is a producer here at The Current. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.