Having a December birthday can be a bummer. Why it's easy to feel 'lost in the holiday shuffle.'
'They would forget my birthday entirely'
Birthdays, wherever they fall on the calendar, tend to come with some baggage. “People get birthday blues for a variety of reasons,” explains clinical psychologist Carla Marie Manly, who hosts the podcast Imperfect Love. “If a birthday is viewed as a sign of ‘getting too old’ or ‘not having accomplished enough’ by a certain age, feelings of depression can set in.”
But when a birthday falls in December, something especially fraught occurs, as one popular meme puts it: “All I want for Christmas is for someone to remember my December birthday.” Sure, December birthdays can seem like a joke, but for many the reality of having one really can be a downer — especially in childhood.
“My birthday is on Christmas,” says Chris Hite, a professor at Allan Hancock College. “Growing up I was constantly reminded by my siblings how I ruined Christmas the year I was born because they all had to be shipped off to our grandparents while our parents were at the hospital.”
“As a kid I thought having a December birthday was tough," licensed psychotherapist Wendy Leeds, whose birthday is December 23, tells Yahoo Life. "People would give me one gift and say, ‘This is for your birthday and Christmas.’ Or they would forget my birthday entirely.”
“A December 24th birthday is all I’ve known,” adds Valerie Zucker, who runs Zucker Media Group. “It’s a time of year that everyone is celebrating, so sometimes my birthday is secondary.”
Ask most people in your life with a December birthday how they feel about it, and you’ll likely hear similar responses. Many just don’t feel terribly celebrated when their birthday is squished between so many other events.
“It's natural to want to have one day a year that you can call your own: a day where you are showered with special love and birthday attention,” says Manly. “It can feel hurtful when others seem too busy or distracted to celebrate you.”
Hite remembers a particularly special birthday celebration, but it involved moving his birthday to a different month. “My mother, a saint, threw me a birthday party one year in summer,” he says. “It was a genuine surprise to see all my school friends at home before school even started, but beyond that, my birthday was never a cause for celebration beyond my immediate family.”
December birthday or not, Manly does explain that “birthday blues” can strike no matter what month you were born in. “In my clinical practice, it’s common for certain patients to struggle with the birthday blues,” she says, noting that people who are very giving often end up feeling neglected on their birthdays if a similar fuss isn’t made over them.
“Patients who feel lonely and isolated tend to feel more blue around their birthdays because of the heightened sense of feeling uncared for or unloved,” she adds. “Although their feelings of sadness are surely not wrong or inappropriate, people who get the birthday blues often feel terribly guilty — and even ashamed — for feeling sad or neglected.”
That said, she also notes that birthday blues can be exacerbated if you were disappointed by your birthday as a child. “Some people get the birthday blues because they — consciously or unconsciously — connect their birthday with unhappy childhood occasions,” she says. “A child whose birthday was often forgotten or ignored might, in adulthood, slip into feeling sad as their birthday nears.”
Of course, the feeling of disliking a December birthday is not universal. “I feel truly blessed having this December birthday and celebrating it with family and close friends every year,” says physician Dr. Nesochi Okeke-Igbokwe, whose birthday is on Dec. 24. “Having a birthday during this time of year is an exceptional honor that I truly embrace.”
And many, who didn’t love their December birthdays as kids, have grown into feeling gratitude for a birthday during the holiday season. “As a grown-up, I find there are some real benefits to having a December birthday,” says Leeds, noting decorations everywhere, a generally festive feeling in the air and an abundance of music and food on her benefits list. “More importantly,” she adds, “this is the time of year when families come from all parts of the world to be together for the holidays, which means we get to spend our special day with people we might not otherwise see.”
As Manly reminds us, birthdays really are all about feeling special, and anyone in your life with a December birthday perhaps needs a little extra attention after a lifetime of birthday-holiday combinations. “Unfortunately, those with December birthdays often feel neglected and lost in the holiday shuffle,” she says. “In our busy world, we want to feel seen and loved.”
