My birthday is in December. Anyone with a December birthday knows just how magical – and how horrible – that can be.
In an unexpected twist, my daughter was born between Christmas and New Year’s. What awful timing. I blame my husband. She wasn’t due til mid-January, but my husband said he needed the little tax deduction to come early. It was a joke that I didn’t find funny when I was in horrible pain four days after Christmas. It was still not funny when I had to take down decorations and disassemble three Christmas trees (don’t ask) a few weeks postpartum. It’s even less funny every year when I have to figure out what to buy my daughter for her birthday four days after I’ve just exhausted all possibilities, creativity and resources to make Christmas amazing.
Yet, having a December birthday makes me sympathetic to her cause. There’s a certain magic about having everything beautiful and enchanting all happen during the same season. Every year my mom waited til my birthday for us to do all of our tree decorating. Though it was fairly late in the season, especially by today’s standards, it was like all the happiness in the world happened at the exact same time. I looked forward to it all year long – that wonderful season where happiness piles upon happiness.
There’s also the downfalls. Having a Christmas birthday means you often get joint gifts – “This is for your birthday AND Christmas” kind of gifts. No. Just… No. Birthdays are meant to be celebrated with a special rarity that only happens once a year. Do not, by any means, join it with another event reducing the distinctiveness of the day. In no scenario do July babies get birthday gifts also intended to be their Christmas present.
I also occasionally receive the birthday gift that is clearly not a birthday gift. One year it was a Santa cookie jar. Just because your birthday is NEAR Christmas does not mean you want it to REFLECT Christmas. Let me digress for a moment in order to explain…
My husband does not care about birthdays. I however am fanatic about them. Each person gets ONE day a year that is solely their own – for the most part. I feel bad for my cousin whose little sister was born on the same day as he was, just many years later. While I’ve met a few people who enjoy sharing their day with a loved one, I’m entirely too selfish for this nonsense. Call me egocentric if you must, but I believe each person should have one day that is really all about them. Maybe it’s because I’m a mom and every day is about every, single other person on the planet. I pack food for other people. I worry about other people’s clothes and school assignments and whether or not their shoes are too small. I wipe bottoms and faces and stinky, smelly, black feet. I tuck little people into bed and often fall asleep before my teeth are brushed. So, excuse me if I think there should be ONE day where I get treated with affection, where I get to pick what we eat, and where I get the FIRST piece of cake and not the last.
So, I want my gift to reflect me. I want it to be about me, as selfish as that sounds. I want it to reflect my likes, my dislikes, my personality.
So, as hard as it is emotionally, creatively and financially, I try to do the same for my daughter. I admit, figuring out twice the number of gifts is a real challenge. Do I use up the good ideas at Christmas or save them? Every year it’s been a dilemma and I can’t say that a time or two I realized too late that I might have erred in the choice. But I want it to be a day about her. I rally her friends – the ones that aren’t traveling, aren’t exhausted by the Christmas fun, aren’t in a sugar coma – and we have a celebration. We act as though it is the greatest day in the entire year.
And for me, it is. It IS the greatest day in the whole year. If you’ve ever met your baby for the very first time, then you know why it’s worth celebrating. Nothing else is as magical as that. Nothing else is as perfect, as complete and as joy-filled as that moment. Not even Christmas. Not even a BUNCH of Christmases put together. That baby is worth celebrating and having her very own day.
I think that must be how God feels about celebrating the birth of the baby that came to save the world. We are busy people, rushing through celebration after celebration, but that baby also deserves a day that we stop and pause and reflect in the magic of the moment. The most magical moment in all of the history of the world. Nobody wants to share a birthday with anyone else, and if anyone deserves it, I think it’s Jesus.
Happy birthday to ALL the December babies. May you each experience the magic and wonder that you deserve. May you get no gifts that are red and green wrapped, and may the world pause to reflect on the beautiful individual that you were created to be. And may you get the first piece of cake at the party where everyone is celebrating you.
And then, in complete and utter empathy, may you attend the party for the One who was born in a stable that you may have birthdays for all of eternity. Because I, for one, am CERTAIN there will be CAKE in heaven.
