Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Advent Calendar Holiday Happenings

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I have decided to do this advent calendar thingy that my grandma told me about. Whatever gets me blogging, right? Basically, I am supposed to blog about a specific topic everyday until Christmas. I'm already starting 15 days late, so I'm already doing too well with this blogging commitment.

We have two birthdays that fall particularly close to major holidays in my family. Most of the time these birthdays don't receive the full celebration that others do, but in the last few years greater effort has been made to not let these birthdays get lost in the holiday shuffle.

My paternal grandmother celebrates both her anniversary and birthday in December. I think her birthday probably gets overshadowed most since it is on the 22nd of December. Her birthday usually gets swallowed by Christmas. Last year I spent my first year in Arizona since high school. My husband and I took that opportunity to visit my grandparents and see my grandmother on her birthday. My grandmother's excitement really showed throughout the day. I have to say my grandma looks so young and beautiful for her age and really radiates when she is in a happy smiling mood. We gave her a fun little game that we all played together a few times, which is sort of our thing. I am really glad that we took that opportunity to celebrate her birthday last year because I'm not there to celebrate it now. Being there for her birthday made me realize how time is flying by faster than I can even count. My grandmother is in her mid 70's, but in my mind she was always in her late 60's. Although I keep getting older, for some reason, I stopped my grandparents from aging about 5 years ago. I guess when I went off to college I sort of stopped the clock on everything that was happening back home.

My birthday happens to be the other holiday birthday. It usually falls around or on Thanksgiving. That has always been a really tough thing for me to deal with. Having my birthday on a holiday meant that I didn't get taken out to eat for a special birthday dinner or my own family gathering. We always had to celebrate my birthday on Thanksgiving, which meant that most people forgot about my birthday. It wasn't until my first year of marriage that we truly honored my birthday on a day other than Thanksgiving. I have to say, it is much nicer celebrating Thanksgiving day as Thanksgiving day, instead of trying to cram in birthday celebrations as well. Plus, turkey tastes much better without the existential crisis that accompanies age :)

Anyone else have holiday birthdays? How do you celebrate? I know some people don't put up the Christmas tree until after all the birthdays are out of the way. Other people celebrate the half birthday.

2 comments:

  1. We don't really have any holiday birthdays, but our Anniversary is now just around Thanksgiving and we are JUST realizing that it is going to be difficult to ever get away on our special day since it is so close to a holiday. We will have to celebrate it way early also so it doesn't combine with Christmas!

    Love the post, by the way!

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  2. Haha I was tired last night and Caroline would not go to bed. Anywho my birthday fell on election day before. So I didn't have school cause they used it for the election. But our anniversary is in Dec, but thus far hasn't been overshawdowed...we haven't been married very long though..we'll see what happens as we get older.

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