A Birthday Cake in Cambridge

He paid two visits to the Breed home, which was in Cambridge at 367 Harvard Street. The first was on May 23, 1912.

Over a hundred guests had come to welcome the Master. Florence's mother Alice Breed had baked Him a birthday cake with sixty-eight candles, and to symbolize universality and the love many bore Him then and would in increasing numbers bear Him down the ages, had decorated it with tiny flags of the United States, Persia and England. Her first cake fell and she had to bake another. This may have produced a number of stories we have often heard but could never verify. It is reported that of a failed cake, whose creator told Him she had used her prayer book while preparing it, the Master responded, 'You should have used your cook book instead.' We like the anecdote but somehow it does not sound like the Master to us, and we are fairly sure it did not happen in the present case.

Significantly, He did not stay for the festivities. He forgave this time, but had forbidden the celebration of His birthday. Six years before He had told Khan and other pilgrims that besides Naw-Rúz (New Day) the Holy Days were only for the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, that His birth on the twenty-second/twenty-third of May (the Bahá’í day begins at sunset) was 'only a coincidence', and now in His address He spoke only of the Báb's Declaration on this day, saying not a word about Himself. Afterward, Alice persuaded Him to step into the dining room and at least see the festive table and the cake, and take a little refreshment. He sat in the large, brocaded 'grandfather' chair but soon left.

Source: Marzieh Gail, Arches of the Years, p. 89

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: birthday).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/birthday