Do You Get Cheated if Your Birthday is Christmas Day?

Christmas has always been my favorite day of the year, so hearing we were due to have a baby on Christmas Day thrilled me beyond measure. But being due to have a baby on Christmas day and actually having a baby on Christmas are two different things, and I couldn’t help but think, “Really, who has a Baby on Christmas?” Certainly, I didn’t deserve this! However, Christmas morning rolled around and, it became obvious that this would in fact be the big day. The cramps came closer together and the pain became more intense, and we knew this was our big day!

Our little boy was the only one born locally that Christmas, and, after the initial check up, our precious gift was placed in his bassinet, a name tag and a bright red Christmas stocking displayed above his head. We had thought about Noelle for a girl, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me until someone mentioned it later that perhaps we should have named this baby Christopher or Nick or some other Christmassy name.

The conversation a baby will inspire and how free people are to give their opinions on different topics can be funny. Having been pregnant for almost four years, maybe I’ve gotten used to people freely offering their opinions on names and weight gain and such. Maybe it’s that I’ve learned to accept some critics as part of parenthood, or maybe it’s just that, now that my littlest one is five, the memory is so distant that it doesn’t hit as close to home anymore, but I don’t think any of that bothered me as much as the comments about having a Christmas baby did. People we knew and total strangers on line at the grocery store would, at first, light up upon hearing his birth date and then immediately look crestfallen. “Poor kid,” they’d say, “he must get so cheated!”

Somehow, the specialness of being born on Christmas Day had been replaced by the realization that he’d have only one celebration each year rather than one for Christmas and one for his birthday, and I began to wonder if I’d been selfish to be so excited about having a baby on this wonderful day. There were years all his friends were away for Christmas break, and he didn’t get the party I’d hoped to throw. Many times, he received his birthday gifts in Christmas wrapping paper or he received one gift meant for two holidays, and I’d wonder if he was being cheated. But there were good things to come out of it too.

Some of his best “birthday” celebrations weren’t on his birthday at all. We had modified half birthdays, and my mom had the great idea of celebrating by taking him out to dinner on the 25th of some month, like a mini surprise party. Those ideas were great, but everyone knows a child, and adults too, want to feel special on their birthdays, and this little one’s day would always be overshadowed by Christmas.

I worked hard to make Christmas a birthday celebration for this little guy. Each Christmas morning begins in one of the boys’ rooms with a Bible reading of the birth of Jesus. After that, my Christmas Baby is allowed to open the first gift while his brothers are dying to see if Santa has come. When he says he’s ready, we leave the room to follow the glow of the tree Santa decorated while everyone was asleep and tear into presents. The birthday celebration has carried over here as the living room has, at times, been decorated without the traditional green and red in favor of green and gold for the Green Bay Packers, his favorite team. Other years, it’s an alien invasion Christmas where Star Wars and aliens play a prevalent role in the decorating scheme. I’ve even made him “Christmas birfday cake that is an alien spaceship disguised as a Christmas tree so no one knows that it’s really a cake!” Figure that one out! I worked really hard to be sure he wasn’t cheated on Christmas.

I needn’t have worried. I remember him, time and again, putting his chubby, dimpled little fists on his cute little hips and pucker his brow to tell people who exclaimed, “Oooh a CHRISTMAS BABY!” that he was not a Christmas baby! He was a Christmas big boy! This little one might not have wanted to be called baby, but Christmas was definitely part of who he was.

The effort I put into making Christmas special for him had become such a part of our lives, and things like Green Bay Packer decorations and alien invasions, the first gift and dinners out at random months have become so expected that I sometimes wondered if my Christmas Baby was in fact getting cheated in a different way at Christmas, not because of the doubling up of gifts or the lack of birthday wrapping paper, but because, in all the compensating, I was afraid he’d lose the realization that this special day was also Jesus’ special day. I was afraid, not that he wouldn’t get more cheap toys, but that he wouldn’t really get the gift of Our Savior. I shouldn’t have worried. God works even when I’m busy making plans for alien/Christmas tree birthday cakes, and I knew He’d worked on my son’s heart one day, that my son got the gift of Christmas when he said to me very matter of factly, one day “Mom don’t worry. Everyone shares a birthday with someone. I’m just lucky that I share mine with Jesus.”

Now, years later, I am happy to say, I am still thrilled to have a Christmas Baby, and when people pity him for being born on this special day I just smile. I no longer worry about him feeling cheated and know God has great plans for Him.

Merry Christmas!

And, if your birthday falls on Christmas too, have a very Happy Birthday!

God Bless…