Who, what, where, why, when and how did the tradition of blowing candles on a cake start?
Here’s what I found online: Why do we have candles on birthday cakes? Candles on birthday cakes have been around for some considerable time. Birthday celebrations were originally not celebrations at all, according to some; instead, people worried that they would be attacked by spirits on the anniversary of their birth, and so clustered with family and friends in order to keep safe. This quasi-religious aspect to a birthday “celebration” continued; we have birthday cakes because either the Greeks made round cakes to venerate Artemis, goddess of the moon, or because the Germans made a special bread (which might be called Geburtstagorten and might not) in the shape of the baby Jesus’ swadding clothes. The candles were an extension of this; Gibbons stated in 1986 that the Greeks put candles on their round cakes to make them glow like the moon, hoping to gain Artemis’ special favour. Alternatively, the candles were intended to carry the birthday wishes up to God (or the gods), along with th
