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Christmas Baby
Whenever it comes up that I am a Christmas baby (this happens most often at hospitals and labs, which have a justifiable obsession with confirming my identity), the first question is whether I failed to receive the appropriate number of gifts. I can always proudly announce that I probably got more than my share of presents, so attuned was my mother, Eileen, to the special nature of a Christmas birthday.
It's safe to say that Christmas was the highlight of the year for Eileen. She decorated as lavishly as the budget allowed (although no tree went up until December 18). She made and distributed cardamom coffeecakes to neighbours and friends during the season. She delighted in carols and lights and bells and church services and candles; giving and receiving, but especially giving, was the secular point of the celebration; the religious point was self-evident.
If I was shortchanged in any way it was this: birthday parties were virtually impossible. I can remember only one party during my childhood--a surprise party when I was sixteen. It took place at the "country club", a small-town effort to ape our betters. It had only a nominal resemblance to the sophisticated meeting place of wealthy golfers in larger, wealthier cities. Nonetheless, it passed for an elegant venue and I was thrilled to receive, for the first time in my life, birthday gifts from a gaggle of other sixteen-year-olds. Some 54 years later I threw the second birthday party of my life, hosting a Christmas-Day birthday open-house.
The biggest perk of my circumstantial birth date was all about timing. Every Christmas Eve our family of five (later six) kids joined with the large Catholic Crosby family down the street. We were of matching ages and were all musical. Around 4:30 on Christmas Eve, already turning to dark night, we would pile into the two family cars--five children and one father in each car--and make the rounds of some dozen homes scattered around the town. At each house we would spill out of the cars, muffled and gloved and hatted against the Midwest cold, and assemble at the front door to sing Joy to the World, Angels We Have Heard on High, Adeste Fideles, O Little Town of Bethlehem, and Silent Night in four-part harmony. The householders would come to the door and listen in (feigned?) wonder, then invite us in to sing more. We were offered cookies and warm cider. Then on to the next house.
After an hour of singing and driving and singing, we ended up at either the Crosby house or our house for a meatless meal as mandated by the Church in those days. Meatless but still plentiful. Every year at the end of the meal Irma Crosby, the tiny matriarch of the family, would confess, "I have committed the sin of gluttony." And every year Irma and Eileen would exchange gifts: each gave the other a box of chocolate-covered cherries.
We still haven't reached the perk of my Christmas birthday. After dinner the families separated, to meet again a few hours later at the Catholic Church for Midnight Mass. Before Mass began the children from our two-room parochial school processed into the church, singing carols. Dressed in white surplices and (maybe) holding lit candles, we walked two-by-two up the centre aisle then turned and went down a side aisle, ending by tiptoeing up the stairs to the choir loft. And then came the Mass, a Latin Mass accompanied by the "choir", which consisted of ten or so of the girls from grades five through eight.
Finally the Mass is over and the over-tired, over-stimulated children go home. And here comes my perk. Because it was already Christmas Day, I was allowed to open a present. I could choose any gift addressed to me and open it right then and there. My siblings were elf-green, tree-green with envy. Choosing the gift to open was agonizing; I wanted to choose something beautiful and/or exciting, but I didn't want to pick the most important gift of the season because then Christmas Day would be anticlimactic. Difficult choice or not I cherished that special moment. Every year as long as I lived at home I enjoyed a privilege that my siblings would never have. With a permanent, recurring perk like this, who cared about a birthday party?
Copyright (c) 2025 Ann Tudor
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