Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. “My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that’s all,” he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen’s parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.
Augusten Burroughs
Glen had a disability
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My son’s birthday is December 26 – he was 10 days overdue and the doctor scheduled the birth for the day after Christmas. As he grew up, I wrapped some of his more special presents in birthday wrapping paper. I usually forgot to get him a birthday card so I made hand-written notes to him. Birthday parties were a flop since the kids he’d invited didn’t clean out their bookbags during Christmas break from school, so their parents never knew I’d sent a birthday invitation. But I always, always spent time decorating the table and putting up a Happy Birthday sign, and baking him a cake, and we had some extended family over to celebrate after going to his favorite restaurant. It wasn’t too bad. He’s 23 now and has never complained.
Hmm, it all depends. My birthday is within a couple days of Christmas, and I haven’t felt particularly deprived. (Besides, at my age if I want a special present, I get it myself. My wife certainly won’t know what to get.)
But, the whole world (or all of America) celebrates on these birthdays!
The wife, every seven years, has her birthday fall on Thanksgiving Day.
Every seven years, I am given a hard time for having both pies and a cake.
“You’re TRYING to make me fat?”
“But, dear, the children expect it. Think of the children!”
Oh, mine is somewhat odd, too. My mother and I shared our birthdays. So TWO cakes on my natal day!
I also know two siblings whose ages were exactly one year apart. They were in their fifties when I met them, so they had a good time on their shared birthday – but told me horror stories of the sibling rivalries right up into their late twenties.
Oh, that is so true…
My birthday is 12/25, and my brother’s was 12/24. All our childhood, we got no birthday parties, separate from Xmas (and people were cautious about inviting my mother to holiday events).
Irritating.
On the other hand, I remember reading in the paper as a teenager that a girl had just been born on Xmas, and the family name was already “Noel”. They named this child “Christie Carole Noel”.
So, it can always be worse. I live in hope that she grew up to call herself Spike, or Butch…
My sister, too.
Dec 25, 7 AM.
She’s always grumbling about all the b-day gifts she was cheated out off by not being born in July.