(Link submitted by friend of the blog, Nancy Matson)
Families sometimes have strangely scheduled and often inconvenient birthdays. Sometimes people are born too close to a major gift-giving holiday, increasing the financial strain and reducing the flow of gifts. Others end up with family members closely clustered together, with the same result. But in one much happier reversal of Bleak Winters, a Toledo-area family experienced something much more precise:
FOUR birthdays all on January 4th, across four generations.
That’s right, Richard Stiff’s family started off the tradition with his (now-passed) father Marshall being born on January 4th, 1924. Richard, himself was then born on the same day in 1947, his daughter Julia following the pattern in 1978, and her daughter Kourtney following up the rear (for now) in 2011.
The family claims this was entirely unplanned timing and seems to enjoy the family connection, with various family traditions each year to celebrate the connection. Their biggest challenge appears to be simply the difficulty in finding appropriate birthday activities in the chilly month of January.
[SOURCE: Toledo Blade via Yahoo! News]
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I was born on my mother’s birthday, and my son was born on my birthday. February 3rd– three generations. Just one day off from this article. But, the odds aren’t that crazy, and are highly adjustable. When I did the math previously, it seemed that based on the number of children I have and the number of children my mother had, the odds were something like 1/40,000 families have 3 generations with the same birthday, so in a town the size of Louisville, there are likely a dozen or so others.