There are many things that those Yeshivish types do and believe based on how “frum” it sounds/looks/feels. This is so even if there are alternative, more convincing, viewpoints within the Jewish tradition or even if it put them directly at odds with the established halacha. Some beliefs even have been magic-ed up from thin air or 16th Century Christianity.
These infractions can be saved until later posts as no doubt there could be counterarguments. Instead, here is an example where there is absolutely nothing wrong with what Chareidim do, but is a clear case where you just can’t imagine them doing the opposite. That is, they celebrate their Hebrew Birthdays and encourage Ba’al Teshuvot to do likewise. A person’s ‘secular’ birthday- or ‘solar’ to be more neutral- is religiously meaningless.
Now, there is a view expressed by some of our sages that the opposite is the case. For example, Ibn Ezra says:
[T]he beginning of each individual's year is from the moment he was born, and when the sun returns to the same point at which it was earlier, the person completes one full year
And as Saadya Gaon says:
A person's life is numbered according to solar years, as is the life of any growing thing, for example, trees and the like
This may be a minority view- I don’t know- and so is not something I advocate one way or another. Rav Yaakov Emdem says G-d “holds” by both birthdays. However, it “just don’t sound frum” to have a birthday according to a secular/non-Jewish/goyishe calendar. It just seems to be a dilution of Yiddishkeit and assimilation into the surrounding culture. As such, it is something to be avoided wherever possible.
Even were one to be convinced by Ibn Ezra, it just wouldn’t help you look frummer than other people to celebrate one’s solar birthday. Here it doesn’t matter, but there are examples where what is frum collides with what Judaism teaches…..
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