It’s November. No surprise to you dear reader, but you probably haven’t got the same birthday rules my family has.
You read correctly, birthday rules. Rules!
No one in the family produces babies at anytime other than Sept 28 – Oct 5, November 20 & 21 and April 24 – 29. You might think I’m kidding, but even the cousins and the married-ins conform to the strict birthday date limitations. I once thought I’d marry a woman with a birthday in January. As you can imagine, it didn’t work out. Not least of all because of her non-conformist birthday (or was it in February? That also might be why it didn’t work out…) D. of course, has an appropriate date, as does my sister’s husband. His birthday is on my birthday, followed immediately after by my mother’s birthday – shared with my sister and one second cousin. Lost yet? Never-mind, it’s the rules that are important.
- Rules
Everyone shall have his/her own birthday cake/pie, no matter how many cakes are produced for one day. One year, there was a pecan pie, a refrigerator cake, an angel food and a stack of celebratory cookies. No, we aren’t a slender group, us November borns. - No other holiday shall adversely affect celebrations. Therefore, Easter treats and Thanksgiving abundance shall carry on, unaffected by consumption of cakes/pies produced in Rule 1.
- No one shall discuss, breathe mention of, circulate a gift list for or otherwise think of any November birthdays before the September/October birthdays have passed. You guessed it. This is the big one.
As you can imagine, as a little girl, my Sept. birthday sister sulked, in the way a non-twin might do in the face of twin birthdays with exponentially more stuff. Her sulking generated the Rule. And so, us Novembers were left only two short months to anticipate while she basked in the balmy, easy-going months between April and September. Oh that lucky girl. As adults, we still stick to the rule (perish the thought that a September born should suffer for a pair of November borns.) But as adults, we sometimes forget to get excited. And believe me, that results in sub-par gifting. So join me in my enthusiasm for the best holiday of the year – the end of the ban on birthday discussions!
Bonus points if you, too, share a birthday.
backlist 
All that cake?! No complaining here!
Best of luck with NaBloPoMo!
oh, how jealous I am. as a child, there was very little anticipation regarding my birthday, for two primary reasons:
1. presents were not much of a thing in my house, for moral and financial reasons.
2. my birthday is in the beginning of March. I’ve always thought this was very unfair. my sister and father have birthdays in the same week (in sunny beautiful May), my mother’s is Christmas Eve. but mine was far from the winter holidays, but not even remotely close to spring. sometimes too warm for indoor parties, usually too cold for outdoor parties, the only thing I could count on was a great deal of slush.
when I got to college, it got even worse: the second week of March is *always* exam week.