Birthday Reminders on Google Now

[egernant]

I've searched this question a bunch but everything I'm finding seems outdated, so apologies if this has been asked before.

For those of us who have ditched Facebook but are looking for a way to get push notifications regarding our contacts' birthdays and anniversaries, what is the best solution? I get automatic reminders via Google Now for my Google+ friends, but that's like 5% of my contact list. I'm going through Google Contacts (through Gmail) and adding these dates to everyone. I can get them to show up in Google Calendar, but that's not a real reminder. I want to set up one of the following:

- Have birthdays from my Google Contacts show up as reminders in Google Now - not just the Google+ contacts, but anyone in my contact list that I assign a birthday
- If that's not possible, set up Calendar reminders for any event in the "Birthdays and Events" calendar that I enabled without having to manually set up 100+ reminders plus an additional reminder for every birthday I ever add.

Any solutions? This should be so simple - this is what Google Now is for, right? The right information at the right time?

Nexus 5, for those wondering.

 

[Deleted User]

I think there's a Google calendar for the birthdays of your contacts. So long as your contacts have already loaded their respective birthdays into their profiles, it should auto -populate