Tomorrow is my birthday!

Yep, I’m a Christmas baby. I came home from the hospital on Christmas Day in a big red Christmas stocking and spent Christmas dinner as the centerpiece (in a laundry basket, I believe). My family can’t help but remind me of this story every year in my birthday card (along with how much they have enjoyed watching me grow into the wonderful woman I am today. And we wonder where my giant ego comes from. 😉 ) But after that, everything went down hill. Every year growing up, we set a place for Jesus at the table at Christmas dinner with my Grandmother. Very nice, yes? Well, I always thought it was a little weird because he never showed up and there we’ve dirtied a whole place setting (I’m sure it went back in the cupboard, but I didn’t think in those terms. I was a very practical child). Also, that was my birthday dinner. So I grew up having a joint birthday celebration with Jesus (the messiah. How do you compete with that?!) and every year we had a cake (I got to blow the candles out as we sang “Happy Birthday, dear Claire & Jesus”).

Now, as a child, I loved chocolate cake (what child doesn’t, except maybe my friend Melissa who is allergic to chocolate. My theory is she was cruel to small woodland creatures in a past life), and that was the kind of cake I requested for my joint birthday dinner with Jesus. Every year we had carrot cake. Why? Well, that was Jesus’s favorite cake, of course. OK, I just assumed that part. No one told me Jesus liked carrot cake. But seriously, after a few years of requesting chocolate and receiving carrot at a joint party, you have to assume that the co-celebrant has requested carrot cake and won (it’s that whole messiah thing again). I hated carrot cake for years! YEARS!! I wouldn’t touch the stuff (I mean, it was cake with a vegetable in it. And usually it had raisins in there somewhere. Blech!) Flash forward to 2006, and I had it as our wedding cake, along with a chocolate grooms cake. Just shows I will eventually forgive a grudge (see, Nate, I’m not totally unreasonable!)

Back to my birthday… The nice thing about a birthday so near Christmas is that I had school on my birthday (except I think we had one 2 hour day one year). Nathan’s little sister started school on her birthday several times, but she’s not so into birthdays. Of course, she never had to compete with the messiah. She also got braces for her birthday one year. I swear, those Presnalls really don’t know how to work a birthday! Back on topic… While I never had school on my birthday, I also never had a school party with cupcakes and all of that. Nope. Not even on the 2 hour day. I would just leave school one age and come back a year older. I also had to compete with a major holiday when people leave town to be with family. I moved my birthday several years so that people could attend the party. It was tragic! I’m very vocal about my birthday now (so people won’t forget and have plenty of time to plan ahead for their family trips to start on the 22nd).

Then there is the issue of gifts. Now, people thought I was greedy because my mom insisted that I receive 2 gifts (even if one was out of the gumball machine) and that one was wrapped in birthday paper. No one seemed to care that everyone else received 2 gifts, just not at the same time. And since my birthday competes with a major gift-giving holiday, people are on a tighter budget where gifts are concerned. Of course, I have plenty of stuff now and don’t need 2 gifts, but as a kid with a brother who has a May birthday, you really start to feel it when he gets all the GI Joe’s he could possibly desire (twice a year) and you get a couple of She-Ra action figures in December. And boy, if something comes out mid-year or if there was something on my list I didn’t get, I had to wait ALL YEAR to try again. Adam got round two in 5 months. That was what really, really blew, the waiting…

So, anyone wonder why I’m so into my birthday? It’s the one day of the year when it’s all about me! ME ME ME!! Well, really it’s because I’ve spent my life defending my birthday from encroaching holidays and family gatherings. So I plan my own party and try to give enough advance notice and then invite everyone I know to go drink margaritas and bowling (and don’t hold it against anyone if family, holiday, or other obligations keep them from the festivities.  I just promise to drink a margarita for them and then make them all share that margarita–seriously folks, I’m not a total lush). It’s fun!