wtf is a smash cake?

When you were a kid and a friend invited you to a birthday party, how did your parents expect you to behave?

a) Wait patiently while an adult cuts the cake, wait for your turn, eat the cake (from a plate, with a fork), then say "thank you"
b) Smash the cake with a baseball bat, howl like wild animals and try to grab as much as you can (with half the cake probably ending up on the carpet and on others' clothes)

Apparently kids nowadays aren't even expected to eat a cake like a civilized person should. An Australian moo shared this video of her kid and his friends acting like a barbarian horde, and is now surprised that she is flaked for it.

http://www.mamamia.com.au/mia-freedman-birthday-cake/

The commenters at George Takei's facebook page apparently don't understand why people are appalled at this behavior. The comment section is full of "kids will be kids", "you never heard of a smash cake?", "they are boys, for God's sake", "they had fun and that's the only thing important" etc.

God forbid someone actually teaches their kid to behave.

I was expected to wait my turn for a piece of cake and eat it with a fork. Then thank the birthday brat and their parents for inviting me and say I had a wonderful time. If I didn't do any of the above I would be grounded for a long assed time.

If the breeders want their brats to smash something get a damn piñata, you can find them fucking everywhere now.

Another reason I'm CF, you probably get arrested for teaching a brat to behave. Hell, I've been told I have "impossibly high expectations" for people. I expect people to say crazy shit like please and thank you, just basic manners.

I really need the beat head against wall smiley right now.

A "smash cake" is what you give infants on their first birthday to literally smash and smear everywhere. There is no "smash cake" when the kid is eight fucking years old. That's when it's expected that the kid can act with some decorum, even at a birthday party. When you can't even have your kid act like they were raised in civilization at home, no wonder these coked-up howler monkeys wreck shit in public.

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"Why children take so long to grow? They eat and drink like pig and give nothing back. Must find way to accelerate process..."
- Dr. Yi Suchong, Bioshock

"Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born."
- Garrett Hardin

"I feel like there's a message involved here somehow, but then I couldn't stop laughing at all the plotholes, like the part when North Korea has food."
- Youtube commentor referring to a North Korean cartoon.

"Reality is a bitch when it slowly crawls out of your vagina and shits in your lap."
- Reddit comment

"Bitch wants a baby, so we're gonna fuck now. #bareback"
- Cambion

Oh whatever. Abortion doctors are crimestoppers."
- Miss Hannigan

I find smash cakes disgustingly wasteful. It's throwing away food. I feel guilty when I forget something in the back of my fridge, or if I overshop and can't freeze the surplus. I guess it's only people who are okay with adding a bazillion diapers to a landfill who find this sort of thing morally acceptable.

What a waste of cake! I just can't stand seeing food wasted like that.

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paragon schnitzophonic
A "smash cake" is what you give infants on their first birthday to literally smash and smear everywhere. There is no "smash cake" when the kid is eight fucking years old. That's when it's expected that the kid can act with some decorum, even at a birthday party. When you can't even have your kid act like they were raised in civilization at home, no wonder these coked-up howler monkeys wreck shit in public.

Yes. Agree. A smash cake is for first birthdays. A little cake for a baby to smash and smear everywhere.

What happens when this howler monkey goes to a birthday and smashes someone else's cake because that is what he was taught as normal behavior?

I was expected to wait patiently as the adult slowly and carefully cuts a slice of cake for each person present.

Thank Goodness Mr S and I don't do birthdays anymore - we stick to Name Days (a huge improvement over birthdays IMHO)

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selidororous
I was expected to wait patiently as the adult slowly and carefully cuts a slice of cake for each person present.

Thank Goodness Mr S and I don't do birthdays anymore - we stick to Name Days (a huge improvement over birthdays IMHO)

What is a Name Day?

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StudioFiftyFour

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selidororous
I was expected to wait patiently as the adult slowly and carefully cuts a slice of cake for each person present.

Thank Goodness Mr S and I don't do birthdays anymore - we stick to Name Days (a huge improvement over birthdays IMHO)

What is a Name Day?

In some European countries, each calendar day is assigned a name, and people with that name are wished a happy name day. We have it in Hungary, though in my experience only older women are given gifts. Older women in Hungary are typically given flowers, though it is still polite to wish someone a happy name day.

I celebrate both birthdays and name days. Birthdays with gifts, name days without, again, unless it is for an older woman.

Lock him up or put him down.
Stolen from Shiny.

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contemplativeintrovert


In some European countries, each calendar day is assigned a name, and people with that name are wished a happy name day. We have it in Hungary, though in my experience only older women are given gifts. Older women in Hungary are typically given flowers, though it is still polite to wish someone a happy name day.

I celebrate both birthdays and name days. Birthdays with gifts, name days without, again, unless it is for an older woman.

That's interesting. Of course with the "unique" names we have in America, many children would be completely left out of such a holiday.

I'm just trying to reconcile this with my dad's extremist view of table manners. I wasn't even allowed to rest my arms on the table as a kid.

I really just don't get people. I understand, even if I don't like, the idea of a smash cake for an infant. Eight is entirely too old for that. They have other ways to have fun at birthday.

"Smash cake" does not exist in my world.

I've never heard of a "smash cake" other than for a baby's first birthday. When I was a kid, mom/dad cut a slice, birthday kid got the first slice, then the guests waited their turn for a piece
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For a baby, sure, smash the cake and make a big mess, but I've never seen or even heard about it for older kids.

That's how Mr. S and I observe our name days - no spending money on gifts (nice way to save money).

"They're having fun, and that's the only thing that matters!" Uh, no. Fun is good, but what really matters is that they know how to act civilized. "Boys will be boys!" So, it's okay to act like a deranged retard?

This is fucking whack, but I honestly hate first birthday "smash cakes" even more. At least with this, it looks like a few bucks' worth of candy piled on a plate and multiple people ate it. I can't stand seeing a cake that probably cost a few dozen bucks being smeared everywhere by an infant who will eat a couple handfuls at most.

One year old infants will smoosh their hands into something as tactilely-inviting as iced cake. I'm sure there are plenty of old-school photo albums with Baby smooshing a slice of first-birthday cake. So why the special cake? Give the kid a little bit of cake, everyone else eats a slice, and Grandma takes a photo of the baby eating/wearing its first cake.

Then again, I'm the wrong one to try and make sense of it, because I think first-birthday rituals are mostly stupid anyway. The kid won't remember shit. It doesn't understand time, let alone presents, parties, etc. The baby doesn't give a shit, and when it gets old enough to understand birthday parties, it STILL won't care that it didn't get a big-ass first birthday party. I don't know a single person who gives a shit about the birthday parties they had/didn't have when they were one year old.