My husband's birthday is December 25th. Yep, I'm married to a Christmas baby. He's pretty much become resigned to the fact that he kind of gets cheated. He says it doesn't matter but I think deep down the 8 year old boy in him is still a little crabby about it.
I do my best to mark the day as his, to make it special somehow for him. Once I threw him a surprise half-past-birthday party on June 25th. That was about the easiest surprise to pull off ever! The hardest part of the whole thing was twisting his arm to get him out of the house to the fund raiser I told him we were committed to attending. He wanted to bag the whole evening and stay home.
We decided early in our marriage that Christmas would be for us and not about making some preconceived required pilgrimage to visit one family or the other. We certainly celebrate Christmas with family, but not every year. We've spent Christmas in Paris and London. We've gone to the beach. Wherever we are, I make sure that his birthday doesn't get lost in the shuffle.
One of my favorite birthday celebrations is what I like to call "The 12 Days of Birthday". Starting on December 14th, he gets to open one gift every day for twelve days. And just like an eight year old, as soon as he wakes up, he rushes to pick a present to unwrap. It's very cute.
Let the games begin!
Aw, what a special tradition! My husband's birthday is the 26th of December. His family has always been diligent about keeping it separate from Christmas. I even offered for just he and I to celebrate on his half birthday and he declined because it's never been an issue for him. I do love having a spring birthday, I like to space out the gift holidays. ;)
ReplyDeleteMy bro's birthday is Januar 3, and he has felt it gets lost in the post-holiday let-down. Like who wants more cake and junk food at that point?
ReplyDeleteI'm also December 25! And I think "crabby 8 year old" absolutely sums up our feelings. It was hard to do my birthday at school, my birthday presents were often wrapped in Santa paper, and I didn't get to go to a bar on my 21st birthday... Realistically though, my extended family always remembered my birthday (in the "Oh shit, honey, do you have a good looking five dollar bill in your wallet?" kind of way) and I probably got more, not less, than my sister. But we still can't shake it!
ReplyDeleteIronically, my two kids have birthdays on Thanksgiving (well,every 7 years) and New Year's Day.