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Merry Christmas! It’s that time of the year again, the season of hot cocoa, gingerbread cookies and combination birthday-Christmas presents. I’m turning 20 this December 27th, so I have two decades worth of experience on Christmas Birthdays. So, let me tell you, it isn’t a fun time.
When you’re a kid, the crappy part comes on Christmas day. Your grandparents arrive, bring you some crazy expensive gift, and then say, “That one counts for Christmas and your birthday!” (Every Capricorn’s most disliked phrase ever.) You immediately forget any joy you might’ve gotten from the present. It is immediately replaced with a petty bitterness of the idea of having no present to open on your birthday. You forget about it soon enough, but it’s a bad moment overall.
Once you grow up and mature a bit, the crappy part becomes the social aspect. The truth is that if your birthday ranges from December 19th-January 5th, you’re kind of inconvenient, and no one can celebrate with you. It’s a big-time to spend strictly with family, so everyone has trips or parties planned, and no one can come, so you get no birthday presents outside your family members that didn’t do a combo gift. You can only mature so much, okay, everyone wants more birthday presents!
When it comes down to it, your birthday gets spent exclusively with family members for your entire life. In my 20 years alive, I’ve only celebrated my birthday with friends twice, and I only enjoyed one of those times. The good one was when I turned 7. Though not all of my friends could make it, I had a blast with the ones that did, and it was a fun time all around. The bad one was more recent, when I celebrated my 17th birthday with a friend at a Chili’s restaurant because no one else showed up. It was sad and embarrassing, so I just never celebrated it again. My birthday became a family exclusive affair. Which isn’t bad, but you can’t help feeling a bit jealous when you watch as your friends throw parties year-round, knowing my birthdays are going to be with my parents and grandparents for all eternity.
All in all, Christmas is a fun time of year to be born around. It’s chilly outside and your mom makes the best food of the year, what’s not to love? Even the combo gifts aren’t too bad, once you realize that you can negotiate better presents from your family member’s 1 for 2 gift deals. My best tip for my fellow Christmas babies is to find the perfect Christmas companion, preferably someone that has not much going on around December. Good luck, and happy holidays!