Ideas for Your 50th Birthday Party

Turning 50 is a big event in anyone's life - so is turning 2 or 27 and all the numbers in and around for that matter, but we're talking about 50 here. You wake up one morning and realize that you have actually existed for half a century on the planet. If you're the reflective sort, you lie in bed and think of all the things you did, all the people you knew, and all the changes and innovations that took place in this time. Life may seem a lot easier fifty years onwards. Like I said to my Ma the other night, you don't have to do a thing anymore - you have American dish-washers, German washing-machines, Italian Jacuzzis, and Japanese Toilets to do it all for you. Sometimes it feels like living in Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times'. Sometimes it feels too darned complicated. And I'm not even 50 yet. But I will be one of these days; people in my family have lived to be 90, so it's a strong possibility I'll be 50 on the way to 93. Anyway, so I was wondering what kind of birthday celebration I would have on turning 50 and looked around the Internet for inspiration.

Here are some 50th birthday party ideas I came across:

The Fifties Style Birthday Party:
Throw a fifties style birthday party. Ask all the guests to come dressed in fifties style dresses, with fifties style hair-dos. Play music from the 1950s and serve the kind of menu that was popular back then.

The Clone Style Birthday Party:
Ask all the guests to come dressed exactly like the birthday guy or gal. Imitate her or his look and mannerisms. At the party, everyone can either tell or write down their stories about the birthday person, how they met them or what they did together or what they like best about them. Make sure the stories are funny and warm, not too embarrassing. You want to make your friend feel special.

The Favorite Thing Style Birthday Party:
Pick the thing the birthday person loves the best and theme the party around that. Which is easy if the person loves flowers - you can all go dressed up as scented flowers - and somewhat tricky if the main passion is sky-diving.

The Games/Sports Style Birthday Party:
Organize games for the guests. Make them silly and fun rather than serious. The point is to have a ball, not win or lose or sit tight on your dignity. You can have a lemon and spoon race, string up biscuits to be caught without using your hands, have a quiz, have a darts game, play at spin the bottle, even have a game of hide and seek.

The Sing-along Style Birthday Party:
If the birthday person loves music, you can organize a group sing-along party or the guests can give individual performances.

The 'Your Life As I See It' Style Birthday Party:
Create an interesting list of questions about the life, personal traits and career of the birthday person and send it in advance to all the invited guests. Ask them to fill it up with their observations and bring it along with them to the party, together with any special photos or mementos they may have. You can make copies of the photos and put them all together with the questionnaires into a scrapbook. You can also ask the guests to view their observations on tape or video and maybe show that at the birthday party. Remember, the idea is to honor or amuse the birthday person, not to do a catty exposé.

The 'World Events' Style Birthday Party:
Create a list of the special world events that happened in the year the birthday person was born. You can put up a banner or banners announcing these. You can play music that was popular in that year, show movies that were the rage then.

The 'Color Code' Style Birthday Party:
Ask all the guests to come dressed in the birthday person's favorite color. Then take everyone out to celebrate to the birthday person's favorite restaurant. Have balloons, paper-hats, paper-whistles and streamers in the same colors. Make up a funny song about the person and the color.

Avoid, unless there is no other alternative, the "over the hill" theme. It's not only a cliché, it's an overused cliché. At 50, you should be doing the 'King/Queen of the Hill' routine.

Another less than hot idea I came across was the 'This is your funeral' theme. The person in question actually staged a mock-funeral for the birthday boy and asked the guests to deliver eulogies. Shuddersome. Anyone tries that on me, I'll pretend I'm a zombie.