10 Ways to Celebrate Your Birthday During Quarantine

Aja Moore-Ramos
3 min readApr 19, 2020
Photo by Becky Fantham on Unsplash

So, you planned a trip to Vegas to celebrate your 35th birthday and now you don’t have a backup plan? Don’t let staying indoors stop you from celebrating your special day in style. Here are 10 ways to party with friends and loved ones, while social distancing.

  1. Virtual Happy Hour- A low lift in terms of planning, but fun nonetheless. Invite your friends and family using Zoom or a similar app to a happy hour to celebrate you turning another year older. Tell everyone to bring a drink of their choice and have a virtual “cheers” to the older you.
  2. Karaoke Party- Sing your heart out via your computer by inviting friends and family to a virtual party, where they can share their screen and type in the karaoke version of their favorite song on Youtube and sing along. This plan requires some tech logistics, but as long as folks can commit to disabling their background noise in Settings or putting themselves on Mute, everything will go off without a hitch.
  3. Trivia Night- Host a video conference and use a preexisting online quiz or create your own using templates on Google Slides or PowerPoint to play your favorite game shows like Family Feud and Jeopardy. You can also develop your own trivia questions based on pop culture, politics, or whatever floats your boat.
  4. Watch Party-Does your favorite show happen to premiere on your birthday? Or do you want to revisit a classic that you are able to access online? Invite those closest to you to share in the moment by projecting your screen and offering group commentary during the episode or getting together for an afterparty after the show airs on TV.
  5. Take A Trip Down Memory Lane- Text an old photo to a friend or relative and engage in a text conversation about what you remember about that time in your life. The memory will hopefully spark nostalgia and laugther amongst old friends.You can keep the party going by texting different photos to friends throughout the day or starting a thread to see what it brings up.
  6. Go Live- Are you missing the days when you could be a social butterfly? If you have a Facebook or Instagram account, you can use the opportunity to celebrate yourself by sharing your plans for the day and creating an online journal entry of sorts that your followers can interact with and publically wish you a happy birthday.
  7. Online Themed Party- Love the 70s? Astrology? Game of Thrones? Ask your framily (friends + family) to dress up to celebrate your special day. Spark creativity by asking people to only use certain items in their house to create their look and share photos or hop on Zoom to marvel over each others’ outfits.
  8. Dance Party- If you like to dance and have a killer playlist or a best friend who doubles as a DJ, go live to co-host your birthday bash or ask others to join you on Zoom to dance along in their living rooms.
  9. Pick Up the Phone- While a thing of the past for some, this is an opportunity to connect with those who you usually don’t have the time to call. Think of someone who brings you joy that has been on your mind and share a moment with them by dialing those ten digits.
  10. Share a Song and a Slice- Maybe you prefer a more intimate celebration. If so, you can have a relative or two join you on FaceTime as you eat a homemade or store bought slice of cake and sing, “Happy Birthday,” while you blow out those candles.

Whether you prefer to celebrate with family members or all of your college friends, platforms like Zoom and FaceTime make it possible that in this time of social distancing, you are not celebrating alone.

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