My mum and dad told me decades ago that they called me Stephanie in light of St Stephen’s Day falling on 26 December. In many childish ways, I sort of resented this; not the naming per se, understand, but the fact that it falls the day after Christmas and is as such obliterated in general and common knowledge, let alone importance, by the birth of Jesus.
As I was browsing for pictures of him earlier today, I actually thought of all of the poor sods and sodettes whose birthday falls any way near Christmas. Certainly, those people who share it with Jesus have it hardest by and large, but anyone whose special day edges towards Christmas Day would need to be excessively charitable, in my personal view, not to resent their parents at least a little.
Maybe mid-November tops is still OK, although with Christmas regalia and seasonal items and foodstuffs hitting the shops seemingly earlier every year [not a complaint insofar as I am concerned], good luck enticing your friends and family to celebrate anything else.
And if you’ve had the misfortune to be born in December… well… I feel for you. As kids it is hard enough to make our little friends care for us without being lumbered with a birthday that competes with JC’s, imagine seeking to muster an interest when everyone is high on expectations for the big man [by which I actually mean Santa on this one] to pay us a visit. I wouldn’t even try. Resistance is futile.
What of a birthday immediately after Christmas? It’s bad enough to celebrate the martyr whom I was named after on Boxing Day itself; were I not the one who mentions it relentlessly on Instagram, it wouldn’t even get acknowledged not unless you’re a staunch Catholic. But what if your birthday trailed Christmas by a little, say 28 Dec? My cousin Alfred was born on 28 Dec and I recall that when I was small, about eight or ten at the time, and my dad would make a phone call to wish him happy birthday [as people used to in those distant, misty days of yore], I secretly thought he was a total loser, seemingly happy to have my dad remember his birthday because I sure as hell couldn’t care less, busy as I was to enact improbable scenes with my new Barbie. Even then I was already immensely grateful my own birthday was 1 September, safe and sound from the irresistible pull of the force-field of Christmas, which now quite frankly extends from October to well into January.
Nigella’s birthday is on the Epiphany, 6 Jan, which is a day as good as any I guess. Every year I send her a [fan] message on her Instagram, waxing lyrical that it’s so wonderful to celebrate a birthday on the Epiphany! And, I mean, the day is of great significance for sure but it is also set on the precipice of the end of the holidays proper. This year it falls on a Monday and I have zero intention to return to work, whatever that means in my case, before 8 Jan itself. I may dedicate the Epiphany itself to the dismantling of the tree and to the cleaning up and tidying away of all festive detritus. But there’s no rush.
One year, I think it was 2008, I spent the season in Italy, then I returned to Manchester to set off to Chicago for work, then I returned home for a week and left again to go to New York. By the time I undid my decorations, it was past Valentine’s Day and winter was almost beginning to thaw. I am saying almost because I was working in Cheshire and winter was much colder there [and then, I should say] than it is here in London where today was another nondescript grey day with a fine mist in the air and 10C.
Would I be one of those people intent on keeping their decorations up all year? Well, no. I actually love the sense of expectation and poetry correlated to the putting away [with a heavy heart] and putting out [with a joyful one] of my precious things. But I won’t lie… even as we are now in the midst of Christmas things proper, I already dread the mere thought of this corner next to me without my tree and its twinkly lights. It’s so easy to get used to something joyful, don’t you think?