Did you know that September 16 is a very significant date? This might be the coolest fact you learn today, but for many years 9/16 was the most common birthday in the United States. A Harvard study that took years to complete confirmed this fact based on real data that tabulated the births of Americans.

Happy birthday to everyone celebrating their birthday today…there are a lot of you!

However, since 1994, September 9 is now the most common birthday in the United States. This is attributed to C-sections becoming more prevalent. Moms no longer have to wait until their exact due date if delivering a week or two earlier is better for her health or the baby’s health.

But here comes the craziest thing: When it comes to the top 10 most common dates for birthdays in the United States, NINE of them are in September. The only outlier date belongs to July (7/7 to be exact).

By this time I can sense all my readers doing the math in their heads and your likely assumption is correct: Many of these September babies are conceived around Christmas when spirits are high and people are at home.

Makes sense, right?

No wonder Beau has two birthday parties to attend this weekend.

My brother was born on September 23…which equates to almost exactly 9 months after Christmas.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. Surprisingly, out of the 16 people who work in our University Relations office here at EWU, none of us have a September birthday! The closest person to a September birthday is your favorite blogger, who was born on October 8.

And a quick look at my Facebook friends indicates that four of them (.3%) were born today—happy birthday Ric, Kailey, Chris, and Neil! Facebook won’t let me easily see birthdays of my friends prior to September 13 but from 9/13 – 9/30, I counted 50 people with birthdays. If you are generous and double that to account for 9/1 – 9/12, it would be 100 September birthdays that equates to 8.4% of my friend list…which is almost exactly 1/12th…and we all know how many months are in a year. So it isn’t like September is dominating in respect to the birthdays of my Facebook friends.

My niece, Mikayla, was born on September 5. 

But don’t worry, I will take the data from Harvard and FiveThirtyEight over my Facebook friend list any day. There is no dispute—September is the most common month for birthdays in our country and we have the birthday of Jesus Christ to thank for that. Don’t Blink.