What was going on when I was born?

A picture caption in Business Day yesterday with an article on companies' gift giving misstated the price of a sterling silver necklace sold by Tiffany & Company. It is $1,200.

Two of the bond market's worst enemies - huge Federal budget deficits and the specter of higher inflation -haunted investors for much of this year. But lately their fears have subsided enough so that interest rates could start 1986 at the lowest levels in six years. In the last two months, lower oil prices and the prospect of smaller Federal deficits have led to several episodes of panic buying. So much so that as the year draws to a close, investors had absorbed a record supply of new bond issues, and also pushed bond prices high enough so that the yields on long-term Treasury issues fell into single-digit territory. The rampant optimism of the bond market caught many analysts by surprise. When the Blue Chip Financial Forecast polled nearly 50 economists and financial analysts late last week, it found that the group of experts was, on average, forecasting much lower rates for 1986 than they had only one month earlier.

The holidays reached Wall Street early, causing a sharp decline in volume yesterday. Stock prices also fell sharply. Traders who were present appeared inclined toward selling the stocks they have held during the four-month rally, and this produced one of Wall Street's biggest losses of the month. Larry Wachtel of Prudential-Bache Securities believes part of the selling pressure may have come about because investors anticipate some tax selling later in the week.

At least six whites, three of them children, were killed today when a bomb planted beside a garbage can exploded among pre-Christmas shoppers at a mall in this white resort south of Durban. The Minister of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange, vacationing near this city on the Indian Ocean, said he blamed the outlawed African National Congress for the bomb. He accused its operatives of deliberately hitting what he called soft targets. The attack was the third against whites in South Africa in eight days and seemed to represent an increase in the readiness of the Goverment's foes to offer violent challenge to apartheid. In the nation's crisis, spanning 15 months of violent protest and repression, only a handful of the 1,000 dead have been whites.

In the basement of St. George's Episcopal Church at 11:15 A.M. yesterday, 9-year-old Sky A. Berdahl inspected the neat row of brown lunch bags, poked his nose into a half-empty one, and in his best imitation of a bellow announced, ''We need more sandwiches!'' As Sky explained that he took his role as sandwich inspector seriously - ''I'm going to be a house husband when I grow up'' - his sister, Beau, 5, put the final touches on a Christmas card. Stuffed into a bag, the lunch and card would soon be given to one of the people who were waiting outside on Stuyvesant Square. Among them was 4-year-old Thomas Frazier, who waited impatiently, tugging on his mother's coat. Flashing a smile from underneath his winter hat, Thomas said he had come to the church to get his lunch.

PROBING 20 feet into the soil of the Nile delta, American scientists have found tiny glass fragments from a volcano that they say could lend support to a theory linking a volcanic eruption to the seemingly miraculous events associated with the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Scholars for some time have tied the devastating eruption 3,500 years ago on Santorini, a Greek island also known as Thera, with legends of the lost continent of Atlantis and have cited it as a major factor in the fall of the Minoan civilization on Crete. More recently, the eruption has been invoked to explain phenonema related to the Exodus, as described in the Bible. According to this controversial theory, the ash cloud from the eruption could account for the ''deep darkness over the whole land of Egypt, even a darkness that may be felt,'' and the ensuing tidal wave could have created the ''parting of the waves'' that swallowed the pursuing Egyptians and allowed the Israelites to escape.

Saying he sought to ''help put America's farmers back in a competitive position in world markets,'' President Reagan today signed the costliest farm bill in the nation's history. Mr. Reagan, who had once threatened to veto the bill, said today that he did not fully embrace it, largely because it was so expensive. He said, however, that it ''provides new hope for America's hard-working farmers and our rural communities.'' ''If things are not going well down on the farm, things cannot continue to go well in our cities and towns,'' he said.

The partnership formed by Wagner & Brown and Freeport-McMoran Inc. to acquire the Midcon Corporation said yesterday that it had secured commitments to finance the full $1.25 billion in high-yield, high-risk securities it wants to use as part of the purchase price. In addition, WB Partners, the vehicle created for the $2.71 billion takeover attempt, said its financial adviser, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., was ''highly confident that under current conditions'' it could raise an additional $1.35 billion in senior debt financing for the proposed acquisition. The announcement, made by a spokesman for the partnership after the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, appeared to be an effort to allay concerns in the financial community that WB Partners would not be able to secure commitments for the so-called junk-bond financing before Dec. 31, when a Federal Reserve Board rule restricting their use in takeover attempts is scheduled to take effect.

Americans' personal income rose in November at the fastest clip in seven months, while consumer spending rebounded from a steep plunge the month before, the Government reported today. But while many economists said the six-tenths of 1 percent income gain was a good sign, they cautioned that much of the nine-tenths of 1 percent jump in spending was simply a rebound from a giant slide the month before. Most analysts said the new figures did not alter their basic belief that consumer spending is likely to be sluggish in coming months because of record-high consumer debt and a low savings rate.

New York State plans to create a system of hospital-based AIDS centers that will emphasize hospice care and home services, rather than long hospital stays. New regulations being proposed by state health officials would authorize the creation of 10 to 15 primary-care AIDS centers in hospitals, most of them in New York City, which has about 32 percent of all AIDS patients in the country. The designated hospitals would receive financial incentives. State officials said the new approach was the result of an increasing awareness that hospitals, with all their technology and medical expertise, were largely unable to stem the fatal course of AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Ever try to keep Christmas holy? It is a job-and-a-half, but at St. Agnes Cathedral Elementary School, Sister Kathy Carlin, the principal, does not consider that grounds for caving in. Right after Thanksgiving the girls and boys are reminded that they are waiting for Christ's birthday - not presents - and then all the teachers do their best to make sure the right kind of waiting is going on. In the beginning, there is the normal amount of confusion. ''We are waiting for Jesus,'' said Katie Howard, 5 years old. ''Why? We want to know what he looks like, I think.'' And Barry O'Flanagan, 8, said he liked Christmas because ''I like getting the presents and buying them for others, but most of all I like getting them'' - not the optimal answer.

An article in Weekend on Friday listing extra theater performances over the holidays misstated the schedule for ''Doubles.'' There will not be a matinee on Jan. 3.