On no other day in the year do more Belgians celebrate their birthdays than on 10 May.
Of the almost 9.5 million people currently living in Belgium who were born in the country, 27,722 are celebrating their birthday on 10 May – more than on any other day, as shown by figures from the Belgian statistics office Statbel.
But the gap is small to other days that also have a high number of birthdays. The difference with the second-most celebrated birthday in Belgium is barely 0.6%, De Standaard reported.
People sing "happy birthday" most often between mid-April and early May. The other most celebrated days are 3, 5, 6 and 11 May and 14 and 28 April.
The least common days to be born are public holidays and the days surrounding them, which have increasingly fewer births falling those days. This is largely because more babies are born through assisted delivery or planned caesarean section and doctors not working weekends and holidays, resulting in fewer deliveries scheduled on these days.
In these cases, parents have a (limited) say in the date of birth and 29 February and any Friday the 13th are avoided.
Shift in 'peak' period
The 'peak' birthday period has also shifted: in the 1970s most people received gifts and ate birthday cake between April and June, but nowadays most birthdays happen between July and September.
Earlier births in the year were a lasting effect of people avoiding giving birth in winter months because infant mortality was historically higher due to more infectious diseases spreading during this period. But with developments in medical science, that risk has been considerably reduced.
This shift over the last three decades has resulted in almost 197,000 more people celebrating their birthdays between July and October and only 71,000 between February and May.
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Consequently, more people are born in the summertime and more people now die in the period that was once most popular for births: the spring.
A similar trend has been reported in France: whilst May was the top month for births in the 1970s and 1980s, since the 1990s this has shifted to July. In the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, late September is the top time for birthdays. In the Belgian region of Wallonia, 24 September is the second most popular birthday day.
