Birthday parties

Just a random thought (rant?), since I've been seeing so much about this on the neighborhood list serves asking about venues, activites, bouncy houses, who to hire, etc., for young childrens birthday parties.

Since when do birthday parties have to be such a big deal???
What ever happened to just having a birthday cake, make your own goodie bags, a craft of some sort, and some fun like treasure hunts, and playing outside? 
Since when did it become a day for spending more, doing more, inviting more, and a party for adults?   
The rule in our house has always been as follows:

• No parties with friends/kids other than family until in kindergarten
• you may have the number of kids for the age you are turning
• no meals - just cake and ice cream - parties are either before lunch or after lunch and before dinner
• we don't do activities until older - activities like bowling or movie
• no sleep overs

Some of our party ideas/themes that we did, at home, are:
and sometimes we did the same theme for 2 years in a row or we re-used the theme for another child.  

• Bugs - bug stickers, make bug catchers, find bug treasure hunt, toss the bug games, bug books,
• Peter Pan - pin the hook on Hook, shoot off stomp rockets, treasure hunt
• Pirates - dress up, build a pirate ship w/ legos, create pirate flags, treasure hunt, make a spy glass
• X Games - all the outdoor games - biking, inline skating, street hockey, pinata,
• trains - build trains, color trains, conductor hats, lantern goodie bags
• Knights - make a knight from boxes, tubes, etc. and paint, play sword fights w/ nerf swords

I'm all for the good old fashioned fun that a small birthday party entails and I just don't get the "bigger is better" attitude.