KEY POINTS:
Having One's Birthday At Christmas Time - Pros:
1. It's sunny (in NZ at least) so everyone's in a good mood.
2. It's Christmas and work is over, so everyone's in a good mood.
3. Work is over, so everyone is drunk.
4. Everyone is drunk, so everyone is in a good mood.
And so forth.
Having One's Birthday At Christmas Time - Cons:
1. Everyone is trying to finish work, so everyone is stressed.
2. As soon as work is finished, everyone gets drunk.
3 Everyone gets drunk, so no one remembers it's your birthday.
4. Hence no texts, cards, presents, etc.
And so forth.
The Christmas Birthday is a cross. Just ask Jesus. Well you can't obviously, but if you could I imagine he would express exactly the same mixture of regret and resignation I feel at having his birthday sucked up by the howling tornado of revelry that is Christmas.
Forced to stand by year after year as the world descends into a seething mass of festivity and nobody comes to your party? Jesus has it worst of all, of course. A party that was supposed to be his to start with rudely gatecrashed by those other behemoths Mammon, Bacchus and Karaoke. My relationship with the Lord is a distant one, but I think I know him well enough to confidently say watching pissed folk photocopying their bums and talking rubbish with glittery eyeshadow on is not how he would choose to commemorate his special day.
A quick Google of Christmas babies reveals that Annie Lennox, Humphrey Bogart and Anwar Sadat feel, or felt his pain. Poor things. A birthday is a celebration of uniqueness, a marker of the moment you entered the world and by doing so changed it. At its finest, it's a day to luxuriate in oneself, to celebrate, take stock and plan ahead. Those of us born at Christmas time are robbed of that pleasure, so busy are we keeping up with this annual orgy of conspicuous consumption and wanton celebration.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that we don't celebrate as wildly and wantonly as everyone else, of course we do. It's just that somewhere in the middle of all the Yuletide gaiety a day gets lost. A birthday.
I completely missed mine once. Lost it forever crossing the dateline from Bangkok to Sydney on a plane full of air hostesses wearing reindeer antlers. December 22 segued seamlessly into December 24 with nary a moment for the 23rd and my nativity that came with it. I wrote myself a birthday card and got maudlin on airline wine. On the plus side, now I feel justified in knocking a year off my age with no guilt.
That Christmas non-birthday pales in comparison with some of the horror stories I've heard from fellow Yuletide-Nativity-Sufferers over the years. Ghastly tales of greetings not given, presents forgotten and in the case of one poor unfortunate born on the 24th, a wife who didn't even remember to say "happy birthday" until New Year's Eve.
If I sound Grinchy on behalf of all the Christmas babies out there, humour me please, I'm the one who always comes to your birthday party in July.
And then there's the name. According to family legend I got my handle from a carol playing on the radio in the maternity ward. Not a hugely imaginative choice for a Christmas baby, but after a 15-hour labour what can you expect. In christening me my parents damned meto a lifetime of obvious questionsand bad puns. And singing.
Every Christmas without fail I am subjected to a lusty barrage of drunken voices singing "my" song. December every year, and like clockwork the cacophony begins: "Noelle, Nooelle, NooooELLE, NOOELLLE." And every year I smile, and thank the carolers through gritted teeth. Still, it could have been worse, once I met a guy who shares my birthday called Santa.
Really though, it hasn't been all bad. Growing up with a pair of doting parents and a fascination with twinkly lights, being born on Dec 23 was no hardship at all. Racked with the guilt of bringing a child into the world at such a frenetic time of year, my mother was unstinting in her provision of lavish parties throughout my childhood, and equally stoic in the face of the destruction wrought on her house by dozens of sugar-hopped girls two days before Christmas. As a child, the 23rd was always a red-letter day, so much so that until the age of about 10 I honestly believed the reason people were so happy at this time of year was because of my birthday.
My self-obsession has abated only slightly in the ensuing decades. I still feel special at Christmas time. There is something wonderful about sharing your party with the rest of the world, even if they are gatecrashers.
I love everything about Christmas. I love the lights and the presents and the hope and the good wishes. And I love the songs, yes secretly even "my" one. A Christmas birthday is the ultimate curate's egg. Wonderful in parts, awful in others.
My Christmas wish this year is for all of you who are celebrating your own feast day over the next week. Happy birthday to all of the other Noels and Noelles out there. To all of the Hollys and Nicholases and Santas and Ruldophs. Revel in your anniversary, remind loved ones forcibly and be strident in your demand for not one, but two presents, however small. You deserve it, it's your birthday after all.
