Henry B. Guppy (British botanist), Chet Baker (American jazz musician), Grand Duchess Maria Vladimironova of Russia, and the late Corey Haim (Canadian actor) – these are the notable people born on my birthday. Okay, so they’re not all notable. We still share a point on our path around the sun that marks another milestone from whence we were born. Birthdays are awesome!
For most people December 23rd is a day for last-minute Christmas shopping, not time for a birthday. My birthday. And yes, I always receive gifts from people for both my birthday and Christmas. Parties are hell to plan – everyone’s busy. A birthday is the one day you’re allowed to bring people together around you. It’s special. It’s all about me!
Birthdays are about passing another year. I would argue that in modern Canada we have all but forgotten the celebrations of life stages and have reduced ourselves to monitoring progress through numbers. Turning 30, 40, or 50 are the dates we choose to have “big ones.” Are these years important life stages? And which life stages deserve celebrating? We kind of celebrate getting our licence or drinking legally. We definitely celebrate having children or getting married. But when did I celebrate becoming a man? When do we celebrate nature? We no longer celebrate the changing of the seasons, nor the harvest of our labours. When do you celebrate with your community and not just your circle of friends?
Christmas. I’ve long since stopped doing things related to a god, so the idea of a religious holiday isn’t meaningful to me. For me there are no more church services that brought the intergenerational, inter-neighbourhood, inter-class interactions necessary for community. No celebrating something together outside an individual’s life stages. I would say that it’s incredibly celebratory around this time of year – celebrating community. Most people volunteer at Christmas. They give more. People are more likely to sing together around this time. We have rituals. We publicly gather. We talk to strangers. We give gifts. We spread cheer.
Sure, there’s the commercialization. I saw Charlie Brown Christmas. And yes, the malls are (more) disgusting with sales and buying crap we don’t need. Hell, I was just complaining about getting enough gifts a minute ago. I get that Christmas feeds one sick side of our community with the healthy side. Consuming with togetherness. It’s economic synergy. But it’s celebrating nonetheless. And if you have a birthday like mine, you give in to having a day about everyone more than having a day about yourself.