Birthdays in our family

I love birthdays. I love my birthday. I love my kids birthdays. I love your birthday!

I’ve always secretly loved birthdays even more than the other special days of the year. Holidays are great but they’re about everybody having a special day and I guess I’ve always found that balancing act of what everyone wants out of the day trickier than with a birthday when all that matters is what the person who’s special day it is really wants.

Then, our 7 year old came home with a homework assignment about family holidays. He was asked to identify a holiday that his family celebrates and describe what the celebration entails. I think his teacher was expecting students to share about their Christmas or Kwanza or Hanukkah or Solstice traditions. But, I love that my son feels the same way I do, birthdays are our favourite holiday! He shared that his favourite part of birthdays in our family is that the birthday person gets to pick what we have for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We each think of a special gift to give the birthday person that communicates how much we love them, we talk about the day they came into the world (birthdays are also birth days!), we celebrate the year they’ve had and we gather with friends and family and have cake.

Birthdays are special, messy, simple, juicy, focused gulps of the love we have for the person who was born how ever many days ago and, I’m saying it here first, they’re my favourite holidays!