The practice of celebrating birthdays with gifts and cake would be classified by Émile Durkheim as

A) a social fact.
B) the collective conscience.
C) mechanical solidarity.
D) organic solidarity.

Émile Durkheim argued that social facts are "ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him." The practice of celebrating birthdays with gifts and cake is a social fact because it is a pattern of behavior that exists apart from any one individual and is enforced by social pressure and expectation. Durkheim argued that social facts are the building blocks of society, and that they are essential for maintaining social order and cohesion.