I was born on November 28, which puts me smack dab in the middle of the holiday season. Usually, my birthday is celebrated at Thanksgiving time, but I empathize with my fellow Sagittarius’ on the sometimes unfair nature of the holiday birthday. Don’t get me wrong, celebrating your birthday during the holidays definitely has its perks… but it also has its downsides.
1. You’ve never actually had a family birthday party. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah… These days have become “your birthday.” If someone forgets your birthday at Thanksgiving, they’ll remember at the next family party in less than 30 days.
2. Now that you’re post-high school, you never really have birthday gatherings with your friends from home either, since everyone is too drunk or far into their food comas to hang out and eat more cake. Holiday parties take precendence over your sacred day of birth. Womp.
3. Once you hit college, your birthday greetings from high school teachers were replaced by final exams from professors. Planning to party hard for #20? Think again; you have a 20-page paper due in microeconomics on Monday!
4. Your college friends are all too busy to celebrate your birthday. See reason #3. Cry.
5. Very rarely do you have birthday cake and ice cream. Birthday pumpkin pie! Celebratory apple crisp! These desserts are great, but….cake.
6. Forget about separate birthday and holiday presents. You’ll be lucky if you even get one now that you’ve become “an adult.” Maybe a gift card if you’re special.
7. You spend all your birthday money on holiday gifts. Why save birthday money when you can spend it on other people?! (Sarcasm.)
8. Your significant other spends way more money than other S/Os do during the holiday season. Alright, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you still feel bad for making them a more-broke 20-something than they already are.
9. Your Facebook birthday wishes fall by the wayside, especially if you’re born ON a holiday. If you’re that lucky person who celebrates their birthday on Thanksgiving once every seven years (like me!) or was born on Christmas or New Years, you can just forget about your friends remembering to wish you ‘Happy Birthday’ via the most important and significant form of social media. Cue the influx of “Merry Christmas” status updates in its place. Real talk, though: if someone doesn’t wish you a Happy Birthday on Facebook, should you remain their friend, virtually or IRL?
