You know that awkward time between Christmas and New Year, where time ceases to exist and everything is up in the air? Well, I’m born smack-bang in the middle of it and yes, it’s as awful as it sounds. If you’re a December baby as well, you know the pain too.
Well, the few rare ones of you actually born in December – us December babies have the rarest birthdays. Compared to the monthly average, births are nearly 13% less likely to fall in December.
For years, I’ve felt burdened with a birthday that falls in the worst part of the year – you try competing with the birth of baby Jesus. I could never bring in birthday cupcakes to share at school (a guaranteed way to make friends when you’re five) or had birthday favours in high school reciprocated.
After turning 18, you have to compete with New Years’ as well – no one wants to go out for birthday drinks when the biggest drinking event of the year is happening in a mere matter of days.
Sure, you could throw an event before or after the day – you try figuring out the best day for that when everyone’s going on holiday. Us December babies deserve to have something on our actual birthday. Everyone else gets to.
If you live in NSW, just when we thought our December birthdays couldn’t get any worse… the Government decided it wasn’t worthy of a lockdown lift. C’mon Gladys.
Speaking to a friend, Carley, a fellow December baby, I asked if I was alone in my hatred – or if she also suffers from the Christmas Baby Burden.
“[My sixth birthday] turned me into a cynical Christmas baby,” she told The Latch.
A traumatic experience involving a McDonald birthday party (remember those?) where only five of thirty invitees showed… two of which gifted her the same present, led her to label it a ‘tragedy’. That formulative experience shaped the rest of her birthdays.
“I never really invested the same amount of energy into it. If I did I was usually always let down,” she said.
“People always make a real point of letting you know how tricky your birthday is for their personal calendars,” Carley added, noting as you get older you face a lot of drop-outs before even organising anything.
I’m sure most December babies can relate to this. The year I had a disappointing amount of drop-outs ended in tears and a bucket on the side of the bed.
Carley’s birthday formula now looks something like this:
“I’ve been celebrating [my birthday] pretty intimately for years. As I got older, I would have a really nice dinner somewhere with my family and a close friend, which was always the most meaningful for me,” she said.
Living in LA for the past two years, unable to see her family, Carley spends it with her partner who “always places a real emphasis on the day for me.”
If you’re reading this thinking, “Ugh, it’s just a birthday” – well, heed Carley’s advice.
“We all deserve a moment to feel like there is a day made for just us.”
So pour one out for the Christmas babies. And also, stop showing off with your ‘birthday weeks’. We can never have that. But at the end of the day, I suppose it could be worse. You could be born on Christmas Day, like my friend Bianca.
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