Birthday Season
We just ended birthday season at our house. From June through August five of the seven kids have birthdays so we average a birthday every 18 days through the summer. Which is a lot.
Having so many
birthdays and so many birthdays close together, I’ve had an opportunity to
study all-things birthday. We (with almost prophetic levels of
self-preservation) decided with the eldest’s first birthday that we weren’t
going to do big parties. But, like the 18th century Germans who
supposedly invented kids birthday parties (kinderfest!), we still have cake and
we also do presents with the family.
What I don’t
understand is the progression from a modest cake, to a super sugary frosted
cake, to the mandatory offering of “cake and ice cream” at kids birthday
parties. What parent was at a chaotic kids birthday party and about to slice
cake when they thought: you know what these sugar-fueled imps need with their
cake? Ice cream.
They say “holiday
weight gain” — pounds put on from Thanksgiving to New Years — is somewhere in
the 1-8lbs per year range. What about birthday weight gain from five birthdays
between June and August!?
The holiday weight
gain “facts” and studies are far from uncontested but the point remains; birthday
season is fraught with difficulties. And they go beyond cake.
Like with
presents. Just when we think we’ve got time to get a birthday gift and and can
put off getting it for a week or so, another birthday is here. The number of
times we’ve realized the birthday is less than a week away and we don’t have
something is too many to count.
Online retailers
and delivery services would do well to offer a birthday perk where parents get free
expedited shipping within 24 hours of their kid’s birthday. I suspect we
wouldn’t be the only ones benefitting from that service.
It turns out
birthday presents are a good way to get insight into a kid’s personality. The item
they get or ask for can provide a glimpse into who they are, but seeing how
they handle being the birthday boy or girl is even more telling.
Do they act like a
magnanimous king for the day, granting siblings the right to play with their
new toys? Or do they declare all new things off limits to even their siblings
touch?
I’ve heard one of
the kids, at least a week before his birthday, say, “if you don’t let me play
with you I’m not going to let you play with any of my new stuff on my
birthday.” A proactive, although perhaps self-serving, approach.