CULTURE: Happy 65th Birthday, Baby Boomers!

Today is more than just New Year’s Day for the oldest of the baby boomers: It’s also their 65th birthday. “The generation that once sang of teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony, and then buying it a Coke,” writes Dan Barry in the New York Times, is now retiring, eating early bird specials, and wearing Velcro shoes … or not. The truth is, “many of them, whether through exercise or Botox, have no intention of ceding to others what they consider rightfully theirs: youth.”

Every year for the next 19 years, about 10,000 people per day will become senior citizens—and, as they’ve done with other milestones before this, baby boomers will be “redefining what it means to be older” as they live and work longer. One reason they’re so determined to hang on to youth? The generation known as the “pig in the python” is actually “pretty glum” about the way life turned out, says a Pew Center exec, noting a recent survey. “The pig has moved through the python, and is moving to the final stage,” says one author. “And we won’t describe what that stage is.”