Yes, I was born on a Friday, Christmas Eve, early in the morning (5:51? Mom, help me out here) and I'm quite certain there was snow on the ground, if not falling from the sky. I wasn't due until a few days later, but clearly I decided I'd had enough of the ovarian bastille.
And thus began years of Merry Birthdays.
Kids I knew talked about the post-birthday "let down," when the cake had been eaten, the presents had all been unwrapped and played with and everyone had gone home, and they had to wait until... *SIGH* ...Christmas to get presents again.
Let down? What let down??? I GOT TWO DAYS IN A ROW OF PRESENTS! GLORIOUS MYSTERIES WRAPPED IN PAPER AND TIED WITH RIBBON! TWICE IN TWO DAYS!
Who cares if I never got a birthday party with my friends because my birthday was on the biggest national holiday of the year and they already had plans with their families and our driveway and road were usually snowed in anyway and celebrating my half birthday wasn't really an option since everyone was on summer vacation!?!?!
Seriously, that second day of presents was premium. It didn't make any difference to me that it was the motherload of gifts for the entire year. It just meant I started counting down to my birthday and Christmas a little earlier than most kids. Like, in January.
Often throughout my life, people have -- and still do -- comment, "Aw, Christmas baby. Poor thing. Merry Birthday!"
So original.
But really, I don't mind being a Christmas baby. I haven't known anything else. All the important people in my life have acknowledged the day of my birth apart from the birth of Jesus. And I wouldn't even mind if they didn't! I will happily share the day and the spotlight. Only as an adult did I start to get "combo" presents, and I will occasionally get a holiday card with "Happy Birthday too" written inside. But I don't mind. Much.
When I think how easily my parents could have lumped my day in with Christmas, the more I appreciate the fact that they didn't, and to the contrary, tried really hard to make sure it was a special day for me. (Except one year when I got a riding horse -- the kind with springs -- for both birthday and Christmas, and it was the most favorite toy I ever got in my LIFE and I totally didn't mind and I named him Silver, like the Lone Ranger's horse. H'yaaah!)
So Merry Birthday to me and Baby Jesus and all others who share the day. It's not a bad one to have.
James Orchard Halliwell's adaptation of the familiar English nursery rhyme:
Happy Birthday, Mimi. Yes, 5:51 a.m., my "breakfast" baby (Rich was dinner, Nate was supper). :) Yes, snowy. Dad couldn't come visit me at the hospital that evening, roads were too slick. Elmer & Aggie stopped at the hospital in the afternoon with the yellow teddy bear for you, and said how nasty it was getting out there. You were the first girl born at the hospital after a streak of 11 boys, so perfect and delicately pink and beautiful. :)
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