Happy Birthday George... - DM's Beatles forums

Quoted from Soft_Guitar60

I'm confused: some say his birthday was yesterday...
I read somewhere that George always thought his birthday was on the 25th while he was born on the 24th.
Kinda weird, innit?

"From: saki@evolution.bchs.uh.edu (saki)
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles
Subject: Re: George's Birthday (an anecdote)
Date: 23 Feb 1995 00:37:11 GMT

In a previous article bobs@primenet.com (Bob Stahley) writes:

My wife, Katie, says I'm a bad influence on her. The other day at work, she was talking to a co-worker named Cathy, and she mentioned my birthday was coming up. It turns out that Cathy's birthday is the same as mine, the 21st of February. "Yep", she said, "the day before George's".
Katie said, "No, the 21st is four days before George's birthday".

They eventually worked it out, but Katie said she felt pretty silly.

I can't imagine why. I've already informed my office-mates that they'd better hurry if they want to buy George a present this year. And of course we'll have some in-house celebration for the lad.

Since George announced several years ago that he preferred to move his birthday to 24 February, things have been a bit muddled, I'll admit. Now it's true that his birth certificate, his parents, his siblings, and all other available documentation report his birthday to be on 25 February; but George decided the 24th was a more accurate date.

I'm still mystified by this.

George is not known for being astrologically inclined, so the idea that he gets a better star-chart on the 24th seems an improbable explanation.

I'd also considered that perhaps it was a just-before/just-after-midnight sort of thing, where it was *possible* that his mother (and everyone else) merely mixed things up, what with the 24th and the 25th so close together at that hour.

Then a new document came into my hands---a rare fanzine from 1964, detailing the making of "A Hard Day's Night". I'm ever so grateful to have it, naturally, and was even more amazed when a passage mentioned that on 25 February 1964 George's mum Louise called him at precisely the time he'd been born---12:10am---to wish him all the best. The article intimated that this was a long-standing family tradition. One must, of course, consider that this is not the most primary of sources, but it's an interesting tidbit of information, if true...and George's actual time of birth is reported nowhere else.

Now if George had been born just ten minutes after midnight on the 24th, how could anyone have mistaken that day for the 25th? We must presume that George's parents were sufficiently aware of what was going on, and what day it really was; newborn George would have had a much less clear impression, one necessarily gathers.

And if he were born ten minutes after midnight on the 25th, and endured yearly phonecalls from his well-meaning mum congratulating him on the day, why would George think the *real* date was the 24th?

We can no longer ask either Mr. or Mrs. Harrison Senior, alas, since they have passed on. But I once asked his sister Louise at a conference what she thought of all this, and she says her understanding, as well as that of her family, was that George's birthday was the 25th. She was uncertain what George's motive would be for changing the date.

In any case, this gives us the option of celebrating either day, or both, depending upon your predilection."