12 of pop culture’s best birthday moments

As Culturess turns one, the editorial team is celebrating with a list of their favorite birthday moments in pop culture, from Hagrid gifting Harry Potter his Hogwarts letter to Lisa Simpson’s birthday song surprise.

If anybody loves a good birthday celebration, it’s writers and producers. Think about it: birthdays are bursting with dramatic possibilities. There are the tangled family dynamics of birthday parties. There’s the wistful romance of birthday wishes. There are the larger lessons of growing another year older. There’s the sometimes loaded significance of birthday gifts. Any way you (birthday cake) slice it, the familiar occasion is a pop cultural gold mine.

And TV shows, movies, books, plays, and musicians have been mining that resource for years. There’s the famous episode of The Dick Van Dyke show where Laura tricks Rob with a surprise party. There’s the endlessly quotable tranquilizer dart scene that unfolds during a kid’s birthday party in Old School. There’s even the popular children’s book On The Day You Were Born, if you really want to get literal about it. You’d be hard pressed to find a sitcom or series that hasn’t featured a birthday celebration as a plot point at some time during its run, so narrowing the crowded field down to only a dozen favorites wasn’t easy.

But the Culturess squad was up to the task. Mostly because they were offered birthday cake, but also because these movies, episodes, and songs made an impression. Four members of the editorial team broke down three pop culture birthdays each that stuck out to them as notable. Judging by the picks, it seems clear that the idea of birthdays is just as impactful for the audience as it is for the creative team.