I used to think that Christmas came only once per year, but that has all changed with the rise and rise of the kid birthday celebration. Are you familiar with this?

If you think I’m exaggerating wait until you hear this: On the night before one of my children’s birthdays earlier this year I tried to summon the family to pray together. Upon which the ‘birthday girl to be’ moaned “but it’s Birthday Eve!” Birthday what? You heard it…Birthday EVE!!
In my child’s mind the birthday celebration has already begun the day before and nothing should compete with its ‘hallowed ground’. Then the actual birthday arrives but let’s skip that circus for the moment and go straight to ‘Birthday Boxing Day’…a day to be traded or bequeathed to siblings for further privileges if needed. Did I miss something? Are you familiar with this? How has each of our children’s birthdays gradually become a recapitulation of the Christmas event? But it’s no longer a corporate event shared by the rest of society. No. Instead it is a purely personal matter where all the hype, anticipation, celebration, gifting and post event blues are focused on one individual.

Inside this new ‘Christmas for one’ celebration there are countless other accretions that bolster and enhance each day of the festival. So we have a special school lunch order on the day; no music practice or any other ‘duty’ on the day; special dinner made to order; birthday cake; muffins for school friends; birthday party or outing; plus the usual gifts from family, texts, phone calls, emails and cards.

Ok, I"m being a little tongue in cheek if you haven't noticed.  But when I grew up it was usually much more punctiliar. You had a cake, you open the presents from mum and dad, and sometimes, only in primary school, you occasionally had a party. Nothing happened at school, no muffins, no lunch order and there were no special meals. Clean and simple.

So how do you stop your kid’s birthday from becoming bigger than Ben Hur?

We all love our kids and I had the privilege this year of being house dad. This meant if I didn’t do some cooking and running around there’d be no cake, no special dinner. I even got into choosing some presents. It was a delight to stop and show my love for my daughters in this practical way. Often as a dad you just turn up and help where you can or we are pointed in the direction of the throng of kids and told ‘run some games!’. Yes I had to ‘woman up’ and get this birthday on the road. But I do wonder if it’s just me, or are there other parents out there who are struggling to keep up with the latest standard of birthday celebrating?

I reckon the rise of kid birthdays to colossal levels is commensurate with the rise in the standard of adult birthday celebrations. Am I the only one to notice the sneaky rise in adults celebrating their middle-age? The 40th has become a bit of a thing that I don’t think existed until recently. I keep seeing these posts on Face book with people sharing pictures of their little birthday party on Crete or some far flung surfing destination. When I hit 40, I felt the pressure to do something big, everyone else was. I couldn’t work out why? Why do anything? It’s just 40?! It felt curiously like my 21st birthday, which I decided reluctantly to celebrate with a kind of anti-21st birthday speech. Meaningless.

Something is going on here. Are we thoughtlessly bathing in the sewer of our own affluence? Will our eyes never rest because our appetites continue to roam? Is too much not enough? Everyone seems to be living life in a spin…but all this labour and spinning where does it end? What anxiety is it bringing to our lives to keep on delivering THIS life? Another experience, another thing. A collection; an amassing of moments that add up to what? Me?
Jesus said we are each worth far more than this ‘effluent life’ (Kath and Kim) and that we have a Father in heaven who knows what we need (Matt 6).

So how do we stop our kids’ birthdays from becoming bigger than Ben Hur?

Folks, I know this sounds horribly negative. I’m not down on life. I love doing amazing things. I love celebrating. I’m a performing artist. In all my efforts to present the Bible to kids through Anton’s Antics live shows, I create, I look to inspire, and I search for ways of communicating with passion and emotion and fun. The show doesn’t work unless it’s a fun thing. Fun is good.

But better than fun and life being about one new experiential moment after another, is ‘rest’. Not needing to go anywhere. Finding satisfaction with what we have. Knowing and experiencing that God is enough. That's a great thing to to learn. Hard to maintain, but what a blessing to model to your kids!

My wife blames the whole birthday drama on me. She’s never experienced big birthdays. Just a few presents and a cake. No parties, except one. Me, I had parties most years in primary school. Mum and dad were always generous on the presents. But these days with all the themed birthdays, funky planets, disco dance parties, make up manicure parties…doesn’t it seems off the scale? It’s mental as anything! “Whoooah the gifts are getting bigger, yeah the gifts are getting bigger”.

On the other hand, even in the expanding mushroom cloud of birthday celebrations, there are a few things I’m truly excited about. My kids get excited for each other. They make gifts, they spend their own money planning and buying gifts, they write cards, put up decorations. Man o man I never did any of this when I was little. I certainly didn’t teach it to them. I love their generosity. I love how they can celebrate for their siblings. I just remember being jealous. So we do have cause for REAL celebration here.

My wife reassures me that when all added up, the stuff we do is still pretty simple. The kids don’t get lunch orders except once per term. The parties we do are old fashioned home style ones. No theme parks, no indoor gaming centres. A home cooked meal of their choosing. Big deal right? I suppose it’s just the spread, the contagion. I feel like there’s no containment.

Just when I thought we should be nearly out of the woods my other daughter has just spoken of today being her ‘birthday eve, eve, eve, eve…’. Oh my...

Here’s some questions for consideration, love to hear your thoughts, feel free to post them on Anton’s Facebook page:

What stand would you take? What are you refusing to do? How are you re-negotiating the birthday in your house?
When do you stop doing the birthday thing? What age?

By the way don’t miss the opportunity to contribute to Anton’s pre-Christmas survey online. It’s only two questions and it will allow you to tell me what topics you’d like covered in this blog in 2016 and get you thinking about how to be make the most of Christmas. I’ve got some cool stuff coming up for Chrissy, but this survey will help me prepare it all for you.

Go to the short 2 question survey here:https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DZ8D8PP