by Rebecca Dance
I always wanted to be one of those kids who could have a pool party for a birthday party. Unfortunately, my birthday parties were actually frequently canceled as a child because of snowstorms blowing in. My birthday was also overshadowed by the oncoming storm that is the Christmas season, even though my birthday is within the first week of December. My birthday cards wouldn’t arrive until Christmas when I saw family, and even then I would rarely get more than a cursory “Happy Birthday!” before the next tin of Christmas cookies was spotted.
Now don’t get me wrong, my parents made sure I had a cake and my birthday was celebrated. But I always envied the kids who got to have a birthday party in July that didn’t inevitably get canceled, and they got gifts for their birthday and Christmas. I feel like that’s just the curse of people born in December to get lumped together.
I mean, it’s a beautiful month – there’s always Christmas lights to look at, winter activities to do, and the extraordinary pepperminting of every grocery store. I love December. On December 1st, I start exclusively wearing clothes that could function as blankets and drinking more tea than is advised by the FDA. I don’t mind really that it snows, but it was inconvenient to have thirty cupcakes and suddenly no ten year olds to eat all of them. I just wish that my birthday was more of its own special holiday, rather than ignored between the rush of Thanksgiving and the preparations for Christmas, and I’m sure that other December babies can relate.
However, I was also born a month early and I thank my Saggitarius stars for that. If I had actually been born on my due date, I would have been a Capricorn, and I also would have had to share my birthday with the new year – it would have been January 1st, 2001. I cannot imagine that being any better than sharing with jolly old Saint Nick.
