Half-birthday
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A half-birthday is a day exactly six calendar months before or after the real anniversary of a person's birth, and is therefore just one of that person's many unbirthdays (to use Lewis Carroll's term) -- any day that is not their real birthday.
Loosely, a "half-birthday" can also be a day that occurs near a person's birthday but at a much more convenient time. Someone whose real birthday occurs in late September, for example, may choose to celebrate it as a "half-birthday" together with his or her family during the Thanksgiving holiday.
Most half-birthdays go uncelebrated. Perhaps the most common usage comes from people whose birthday falls near Christmas, a holiday so widely celebrated that it can overwhelm private anniversaries. In the United States, young children sometimes celebrate their half-birthdays as well as their birthdays if their real birthdays do not occur during the school year, so they can celebrate with their friends and teacher(s) at school.
You have no half-birthday, in the strict meaning of the word, if you were born on one of the following dates:
- 31st of March
- 31st of May
- 29th of August (except in leap years)
- 30th of August
- 31st of August
- 31st of October
- 31st of December