Grandma was already sixty-five years old this year. According to the local customs of Jiaonan, when the New Year arrived, she would be celebrating her sixty-sixth birthday.
In this region, a major birthday was not calculated by one's actual birth date as it was in other places, but rather by the calendar year. Furthermore, only elders of advanced age were entitled to have a birthday banquet; if one still had older generations living, even if you reached the ripe old age of eighty, you were not yet qualified to hold one.
Not only that, but the elderly here also faced strict age restrictions for birthday celebrations, which were typically only held at sixty-seven, seventy-three, and eighty. As for the reasons behind this, few people could explain it clearly; everyone simply followed this traditional custom.
Chapter 473