Even though she turned 92 in April, Australia has decided that today is the Queen Of England’s birthday.
And we’ve even given ourselves a public holiday, in most places except for Western Australia, even though they don’t have a holiday in England.
We’ve also justified today by handing out odd kind of pointless titles to notable Australians, as a way of saying this is kind of like being knighted.
In fact we’ve found 68 people made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) this year, it’s news that has surprised Queen Elizabeth II, who didn’t know we were on a holiday today and certainly didn’t know we were using a made up birthday as an excuse.
The Queen’s Official Birthday, or the King’s Official Birthday, is the selected day in some Commonwealth realms on which the birthday of the monarch (currently Elizabeth II) is officially celebrated in those countries.
The sovereign’s birthday was first officially marked in the United Kingdom in 1748, for King George II. The date of the celebration today varies as adopted by each country and is generally set around the end of May or start of June, to coincide with a higher probability of fine weather in the Northern Hemisphere for outdoor ceremonies, rather than with the monarch’s actual birthday, that of the present monarch being 21 April.
Strangely enough, Australia has chosen the coldest and darkest day of the year, the Winter solstice, as our choice of the Queen’s birthday day.
