Quarantined Birthdays for Dummies

Disney Channel planted the expectation of a grand sixteenth birthday — a show-stopper with the big cliché party, live band and of course, getting your first car. That’s exaggerative, but there’s still pressure on the sixteenth birthday to be memorable. 

But with social distancing in place and at least another week of the stay-at-home order, more and more people are celebrating their birthdays quietly at home, making it harder to meet those expectations — my older sister being one of them, with her sweet sixteen on April 25. 

To make my sister feel as special as her sweet sixteen dream, even while socially distanced from friends, I was able to piece together ways to make it her best birthday yet. Quarantine birthdays are no lost causes. If anything, they’re a way to remind that person how much people care for them in the midst of a crisis. And trust me, there are still ways to come together for a quarantined birthday — even without a live band. 

Car Parade

Having friends around to say “Happy Birthday” on your special day can make it all the better. It’d be nice to have that lift-up now, especially if it came from people other than the family members you’ve spent your last few weeks with. 

Having a car parade is an easy way to get that satisfaction without breaking social distancing. 

Invite nearby friends and/or family to line up in their cars close to your street at a certain time. Then they can slowly parade past your house with lots of birthday energy — along with banners, music, honking, etc.

These parades can bring a few minutes of excitement to the day and are an easy way to see all your friends in one place while quarantining. 

Zoom Games

Zoom is perfect for getting everyone together to chat even when we can’t all be together in person. But we’re all pretty used to Zoom by now, and birthdays need to be special, after all. So add the sprinkles on top of the cake by playing a game through Zoom. 

Games like Pictionary, Charades and Trivia can be played over Zoom, and basically any game that doesn’t require everyone to use something that only comes in the game box.

For the three games listed above, you can find random word generators and trivia questions online to help play the game.

Additionally, phone games like Heads Up! and Psych emulates the post-party-hangout experience with your friends. Games like these can still make your lock-in birthday one to remember.

Tribute

As I said earlier, it’s nice to hear “Happy Birthday” from friends and family on one’s birthday. In my family’s search to make my sister’s sweet sixteen amazing, we found a virtual, video card-making website called Tribute.

The website helps you collect personal birthday messages from loved ones and put them together for the perfect birthday montage.

Making a Tribute video is easy. You send an invite to a bunch of friends and family members through the website, and they’ll film a one-minute clip of themselves wishing happy birthday to the person being celebrated. When they’re all collected, you can edit the clips and piece them with Tribute to make the video.

This makes a cute video for their birthday, and, much like the car parades, they can get birthday wishes from all of their loved ones in one place.