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Summary
- Birthday prayers fit a daughter at each stage: a little girl, a teenager, a daughter leaving home, a grown daughter, one far away, one expecting a child, one after a hard year and one who has drifted from the faith.
- Ten short petitions, each paired with a King James verse, cover her faith, guidance, protection, health, courage, character, purpose, friends, gratitude and generosity, and her example to others.
- The priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 is short enough for a parent to say over a daughter at the birthday table.
- Traditional prayers are quoted from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (“For a Birthday”), the 1888 Catholic Manual of Prayers and Hapgood’s 1906 Orthodox service book (the prayer at the naming of a child).
- Russian Orthodox families also keep a daughter’s name day, the Day of the Angel, with church, Communion, a family meal and the song “Many Years.”
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Numbers 6:24–26; Deuteronomy 6:5; Joshua 1:9; Psalm 90:12; 91:11; 118:24; 121:8; 127:3; 144:12; Proverbs 3:5; 17:17; 22:1; Jeremiah 29:11; Matthew 5:16; Acts 20:35; Romans 15:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:18; 3 John 1:2). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Family Prayer, “For a Birthday,” pp. 597–598. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity, prepared and published by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1888. Prayers of Parents for themselves and for their Children, p. 173. https://archive.org/details/AManualOfPrayers1888
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. “At the Naming of a Child,” p. 268. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- “Многая лета!.. Православные поздравления и торжественные обращения” (Many Years! Orthodox greetings and formal addresses). Азбука веры (Azbuka Very). https://azbyka.ru/mnogaya-leta-pravoslavnye-pozdravleniya-i-torzhestvennye-obrashheniya
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