I would like to offer a counter argument.
Bones grumbled as he fumbled for the manual override for the cargo bay lights.
The word was not yelled so much as chanted as soon as the lights flickered on. Only Vulcans could breath so quietly that he wouldn’t hear three dozen of them laying in wait.
This had to be Jim’s fault. The cargo bay had been draped in black bunting and hung with “Happy 50th Birthday” and “Over the Hill” signs. Someone had replicated black balloons. Someone had sent pictures to the Vulcans. Jim.
Bones stood in amazement as the ship’s choral group sang an old 20th earth Happy Birthday song followed by a Vulcan chant of blessings as 50 ritual flames were kindled in his honor. They’d baked a cake. Baked, not replicated. Trimmed it in black icing with “Happy Birthday Bones” written on it and a couple of icing bones underneath.
A ritual dagger was pressed into his hands “you must cut the first piece.”
They were watching with that quiet tension that he’d learned to recognize as Vulcan anticipation. A handful of the younger crew members had managed to find spots at the front of the group and looked almost eager. It couldn’t be for the cake. Vulcans weren’t overly fond of sugary desserts.
Then he realized. Vulcans struggled to understand human frivolity but no one had a more highly tuned sense of ritual. Most of the crew had little experience with humans and were thrilled, in a quiet Vulcan way, the be able to participate in a human birthday ritual.
He cut the cake. No one turned down a slice. He watched as they took careful bites using their forks and contemplated the sugary sweetness. Then catching the eyes of one of the younger crew members, he picked up his slice with his fingers and bit into. The young Vulcan barely hesitated. He picked up his cake and bit it. Others saw and did the same. A group of young faces, smeared with black icing waited to see what he’d do next and he let out the first real laugh he’d managed since boarding the ship. A sigh of satisfaction ran through the crowd.
He was presented with a bottle of very excellent bourbon as a gift. Then instead of a birthday card, the ship’s captain unrolled a ceremonial scroll. Precise Vulcan calligraphy wished him a Happy 50th Birthday and the formal house stamps and signatures of the crew attested to their agreement to the statement. “Damn thing belongs in a museum” he muttered.
…In the fullness of time, the scroll found its way to the Space Museum on Earth as one of the few example of Vulcan ritual scrolls outside of Vulcan itself. The museum director on hearing a senior Vulcan ambassador describe his experience in the birthday ritual as a young crew member once asked why McCoy had been honored in this fashion. The ambassador had explained that only Kirk, one of the few humans to have heard about the Pon Farr ceremony (much less having participated in it) could have understood the importance of ritual to Vulcans how honored the Vulcans were to be asked to host such an important ritual for his friend McCoy as the “Over the Hill” Birthday celebration.*
*Scholars of the era debate whether James Kirk arranged the ceremony with this understanding of Vulcan ritual or whether he thought he was playing an enormous joke on his friend McCoy. Kirk never answered the question with anything more than a smile and a twinkle of his eye. Even after Kirk’s death, his husband Spock refused to bring any clarity to the matter.
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