The informant is the daughter of two German immigrants. She was born in Germany, spent time in France, and grew up in the US. She is a college student.

Informant: In Germany it’s a big no-no to say happy birthday to people early or celebrate early or anything. If you do that it’s supposed to like… give them a year of bad luck so we just…don’t do that. And if you do that to someone else they definitely won’t be happy.

Me: Ohh my god I definitely wished you a happy early birthday this year several times 

Informant: Haha it’s okay it doesn’t really matter. Oh also, for my birthday this year I wanted to come home the day before my birthday to see my parents and ‘cause they wanted to give me a gift too but they were like, “No that’s bad”. So I ended up driving home a few days after my birthday because they’d rather celebrate it late than early.

Context: This was told to me during a recorded in person conversation.