How do swedish people celebrate their birthdays?

Question

How do swedish people celebrate their birthdays?

Answer 1

Family/roomies etc and so on often comes in, in the morning while singing "happy birthday" or some swedish birthday song. In my family we usually bring breakfast (and candles to lit up the room) on a tray. Then presents are opened, hugs are exchanged and the birthday kiddo is left to eat his/her breakfast. We never brought the cake in the morning, that was for later in the day. In my family the birthday kid always got to decide which food was gonna be made.

As a kid I usually had two birthday parties. One for relatives and one for friends. Now I usually don't have one at all because, you're expected to throw yourself a birthday party and invite ppl and make all the food yourself, I think it's a bit of a hassle so I usually just celebrated with my family. Yeah I'm a bit boring like that :P Anyways suprise birthday parties isn't very frequent here. That would be really nice though. I've been suprised a few times with friends taking me out for dinner and the movies though.

Answer 2

For children, the rest of the family usually wake them up with singing (while the child pretends to be asleep) in the morning. Presents and sometimes a cake comes with this (sometimes the cake is saved for a later time of the day, sometimes eaten right away. Later on, there's usually a party. If it's a school day, the birthday is celebrated with a little singing and cheering there, too.

Adults often does it in much the same way, though it's common to only give any attention to birthdays when you turn a ´decade (30,40,50 etc)