How to Celebrate a Christmas Birthday

Our niece was born the week before Christmas, but has gotten 'short-changed' as everyone is making preparations for the holidays. One thing that my SIL has done is have a special Birthday Tree. It's looks like a Christmas tree, but it is decorated with whatever my niece likes at the time (Dora, Barbie, etc). Her birthday presents go under her Birthday Tree, and both trees stay up throughout the holiday. Like you, she also plans a summer party for her daughter. I'm sure you'll come up with something that will give your daughter her own special day. Good luck!

Thank you for your response. A birthday tree sounds like a good idea. I think I will borrow that one. Do you mind me asking how old your niece is? Is she old enough to give feedback about her birthday yet?Good luck on your adoption journey.

I have a 14 year old who has a Dec. 30th, birthday. We too found that we can't do parties early as everyone is too busy with Christmas, and we can't do it on the birthday cause school is out and his friends are gone. What we do now is we have a party for him mid January. That gives him time to get back to school and invite people, it separates it from Christmas, and also he gets to ask for what he didn't get for Christmas, or sometimes accesories for something he did get for Christmas. (I like that things get marked down after Christmas!) He likes it this way. We also do a special Birthday dinner for the family. Our tradition is that for birthday's the birthday child picks the restaraunt and on birthdays they get to order dessert. (we never let them otherwise, being the cheap and mean parents we are!) So all the kids look forward to each other's birthdays for the dessert. LOL. We used to always do the birthday dinner on the child's birthday but as they have gotten older and busier, sometimes we just have to pick a day and schedule it.

I was born 2 days before Christmas and we always celebrated my birthday on my birthday, complete with cake. I never had a party because everyone was busy during the holidays, but I didn't miss it. I'm sure if I had asked, my mom would have thrown me a summer party, but I never did. Only once did my mom confuse my birthday gift with my Christmas gift, other than that nothing. I always thought the suckers were the Christmas babies. And my oldest is a Christmas baby. Here's what we do....Christmas Eve is birthday observed day. I'm one of those people who shops year round for Christmas so we are never in the fray on Christmas Eve. Last year we were in an empty Chuck E. Cheese on Christmas Eve with cousins and relatives who were either done shopping or wanted to take a break. Christmas Eve we do whatever he wants and he opens his presents. On Christmas Day, we sing happy birthday and have birthday cake after dinner and the Christmas presents are open. So it's like his birthday stretches out for 2 days. I feel like his birthday isn't getting caught in the fray. And we don't have birthday and Christmas present overload all on one day. Nothing worse than getting a timeout on your birthday.

To the OP- My niece will be 4 this year, so she really hasn't had any commentary to offer yet.

Great feedback from everyone. Thanks for helping me out. :thanks: You have given me some things to think about. This has weighed heavy on my mind ever since she was placed with me at 4 weeks of age. I just want to make sure she gets the message that her birthday and Christmas are very important. Thanks again for your help.

If I may add just one little thing. My mom's b.day is on Dec. 24. My DD is on Dec 13. Between the two of them I have learned to never ever wrap their b.day gifts up in Christmas paper. It takes something special away from the fact that it's a birthday gift.

I was born on Christmas, as a kid my mom used to wrap my B-day presents in x-mas paper.... And i used to ask " where is my birthday presents?" and she would tell me you just opened them. I would then ask where are my x-mas presents and again she would tell me "you just opened them" after that yr she started using birthday paper LOL I guess I had gotten old enough using the same paper didnt work anymore LOLWe did try having my birthday earlier in the yr, but to me it wasnt the same... so we quit doing it.After that we celebrated on Christmas day and would do my birthday separate from Christmas celebrations but still all on the same day. I was fine with it because it was and still is my special day!!

Absolutely! Yes, please add as much as you like. I am open to all suggestions. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Excellent point about the wrapping paper. I need to educate my family as well on that point. Thanks for the reminder.

Great feedback. Thank you for taking the time to respond. We did Celebrate my daughter's birthday last year on her birthday but separate from Christmas. However, I have one additional question for you. . . . when did you have your "kid party"? This year I had a kid party in the summer. She will be 2 on December 25th this year. So, still too young to ask what she would prefer. Thanks for your help.

I have the same problem. We have one child with a birthday 5 days before and another 5 days after Christmas (another child is a week before Thanksgiving and another close to Easter). It does make things very difficult. As far as the birthday parties with the extended family, we do a Christmas (or whatever holiday) AND joint birthday parties. We have the birthday before the meal and the holiday after the meal. Makes for an exciting day! As far as kid birthday parties go we don't do those so isn't a problem. We do First Day of School and Last Day of School parties as our big friend festivities!