September Birthdays: Christmas’s Other Gift

very September social media begins to resemble a birthday card aisle.  Everyone is celebrating someone.  Children are hauling cupcakes to school. Mothers are ordering balloon arches.  Facebook is reminding you that fifteen people you either haven’t spoken to for years or don’t remember ever speaking to are celebrating a birthday this week.

Why?

Count backwards.

Nine months before September is December.  That’s when it all makes sense.

Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of family, togetherness, and goodwill towards men.  Apparently, some couples took the “togetherness” part of the holiday more seriously than others.

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Then there’s New Year’s Eve, an evening specially designed around sipping champagne, staying up late, and kissing someone at midnight.  Frankly, it’s a wonder every maternity ward in the country isn’t booked solid on September 30th.

Much of this could have been averted if everyone just committed to watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” as it plays on repeat throughout the month of December.  Then again, if we had, we’d all miss the joy of having all our September birthday friends around.

Since this is “birthday season,” it seems fitting to remember all the fun as moms we have celebrating birthdays throughout the years.

Who can forget the “first” birthday?  The little birthday boy or girl, that’s who.  You spend a fortune on toys they can’t play with (they’ll just eat the bow) and an overpriced cake they’ll shove their face in.  Granted, it makes for a very memorable video, but it also seems a bit cruel.  Is there any other birthday you would want to celebrate by plopping your head in the cake and covering your clothes in frosting? 

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Probably not.

Between the ages of four and six, you likely either rent a bouncy house big enough to be seen from space and invite fourteen of your child’s “closest” friends (i.e., everyone in his class) to come over and cry, accidentally knock heads, lose shoes, and otherwise engage in behavior that leads you to drop to your knees in prayer until the parents arrive to pick everyone up.

Ages seven to nine things get very competitive.  One kid has a mobile petting zoo and another one a mobile gaming center.  Your child complains that you’re embarrassing her by scheduling a party at Chuck E. Cheese (which is essentially Las Vegas for third graders).  Before long, your child thinks that anything less than having Taylor Swift come perform is a letdown.  You compromise by taking all her friends to see Taylor Swift in concert.  Sadly, that still doesn’t make you the cool mom since not only did her best friend already take everyone to see Taylor’s show but it was by private plane to Wembley Stadium.

From ten to twelve-years-old you’re asked to host the sleepover you will inevitably regret.  All the guests arrive with sleeping bags and immediately announce that they plan to stay up all night.  Most are fully committed to this plan and spend all night making TikToks and calling DoorDash.  Your child comes in and tells you that one guest wants to go home.  It’s 3 a.m.

When morning mercifully arrives, you’re standing in your kitchen making pancakes for a group of sleep deprived people who hate pancakes (and each other by that point).

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When they turn thirteen and up through about sixteen, your only role is to purchase about $300 worth of pizza with instructions to stay in your room.  Poking your head out and saying “Hi, guys” or anything that even acknowledges your existence is guaranteed to exile your child to a life of social isolation through graduation and who wants that?

At ages sixteen and seventeen, they generally want to celebrate with a dinner with “just a few friends.”  A “few” is defined as about twelve.  They go to a restaurant where the menu is curated.  Your credit card is invited, but you aren’t.

Finally, the big eighteenth birthday arrives.  Yay!!! They are now legally responsible for themselves but somehow remain financially responsible for nothing.

Which brings us back to why there are so many birthdays in September.  

Christmas lights. Champagne and mistletoe. Cold winter nights.

So the next time you’re standing in a trampoline park in September with a group of screaming eight-year-olds serving a Minecraft cake that’s turning everyone’s teeth black, remember that nine months before you could have been watching Netflix.

Come this holiday season, choose wisely.