Born on Christmas Day

On sharing a birthday with Jesus

Hello friends! This is Peregrino, a newsletter about the journey. You’re about to read essay #32 of “40 Before 40,” a memoir I intend to finish before I enter midlife in Q1 2024. The previous 31 essays in this series can be found here.

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Photo by Callum Hill on Unsplash

It’s my party, and I cry if I want to

Sharing a birthday with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, can be tricky. According to my mom, I was due in early January, but my debut into the world moved up to Christmas Day. My parents were hanging out with the whole family on Christmas Eve when my mom started getting contractions. Legend says that it was one of the coldest winters in Monterrey; the roads were icy, which made driving conditions precarious–like when it rains in Phoenix, and everyone acts like they don’t know how to drive. Allegedly, my dad continued the celebration after my mom was admitted to the hospital. Good for him.

I was born around lunchtime, a detail my mom thought was hilarious. According to her telling of the story, all the doctors were getting ready to have Christmas Day lunch at the hospital when she felt it was go time. She jokes that knowing lunch was ready motivated me to come out. Being a chubby kid, you can probably guess how much this annoyed me. I have never heard of a hospital that serves Christmas Day lunch to the on-call doctors. If you’re a doctor and have experienced this, let me know.

We would spend Christmas Eve at my maternal grandparents’ house every year. About thirty souls would pack the place and take turns eating dinner. The kitchen was always warm and humid from all the vapor escaping from the pots that held hundreds of tamales inside. Cinnamon and molasses from the champurrado perfumed the air. We would sprawl across the kitchen, dining, and living room, using every single chair and couch to settle in and pray the rosary as a family after we had completed all the singing and celebrations of the last of the posadas.

Our tradition was to wait until midnight to wish each other a Merry Christmas. The dinner and prayer portion of the party would wrap around eleven, allowing some time to light up bottle rockets and fireworks. Then, all the kids would go into one of the bedrooms and pretend to fall asleep. The grownups would then take all the presents from the trunks of their cars and claim a corner in the house. They would let us lose, and the unwrapping would begin.

After every family exchanged gifts, everyone would start wishing each other a merry Christmas, kissing, hugging, and making the rounds. Then, someone would say: “Hey! It’s Walther’s birthday!” the choir would begin singing las mañanitas–the Mexican happy birthday, and I would inevitably get overwhelmed with emotion and proceed to cry. Then, I would be made fun of for crying, which didn’t help. Looking back, I think it’s hilarious–and weird–that I would first be showered with love and then made fun of for not knowing how to handle it. But that’s a particular quirk of my extended family, and I wouldn’t change these memories for anything. I mostly take notes for the future since my oldest son inherited my personality.

I would joke that I would get a pair of socks; one would be my Christmas present, and the other my birthday present. But the truth is that I always got at least two presents, both wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper, but still. As a kid, you expect presents, but nobody owes you a thing. I would get bratty and complain about how having a Christmas birthday “robbed” me of getting presents twice a year like everyone else. Thanks be to God, I don’t think this is the case anymore.

Santa Baby

Being a thespian, but mostly being tall, fair-skinned, and obese, allowed me to play the role of mall Santa rather well. I did this during all of my winter breaks in college, which was better than staying home watching TV. I have a lot of respect for the professional Santas out there. It can be a rough gig sometimes.

First of all, no one trains you on how to talk to little humans. You get a mixed bag that ranges from awe and wonder, terror and tears, to outright non-believing and trying to pull your fake beard pre-teens. I would usually start asking kids what they wanted for Christmas, and my favorite follow-up was asking them if they had been good that year. This question would inevitably make the child turn to their parents and back to me, which greatly amused me. You know there were some awkward car rides back home.

Second, different families have different lore about what magical powers Santa possesses. Some kids would come up to me expecting I knew their name; this is the worst kind of parent, by the way, don’t do that. The way I would get out of it would be pretending Santa hit his head last year in a sleigh accident, and his memory hasn’t been the same since. Santa speaking different languages was another favorite of mine because I would try to say Merry Christmas in several other languages and usually did the trick in case there were tourists. Coming up with answers on the spot was necessary for the job—lots of improv, lots of yes anding.

Overall, I enjoyed this gig, and now that I’m pushing forty and look like young Santa, I could dye my beard white and make some pocket money during the Christmas season. Maybe next year.

Party time

Birthday parties are tricky; yes, it’s great to celebrate with family, but we all knew it was circumstantial. We were all celebrating the birth of our Jesus, and it just so happened that my birthday coincided with it. Eventually, I wanted to have birthday parties with my friends, and scheduling was challenging. Everyone is spending time with their families or vacationing, and most places are closed that day.

Celebrating my birthday either a week early or a week late became the norm if I wanted most of my friends to be able to attend. I have to say a plus of being born on Christmas Day is that it’s easier for people to remember your birthday, which is nice. Good luck if you were born on some plain vanilla day like, I don’t know, April 11th.

I envied the kids whose birthdays were during the school year, and the whole classroom would sing happy birthday to them, and their parents would bring cake, and we technically wouldn’t have to learn a thing for a couple of hours. Or kids with birthdays during the summer who celebrated with a pool party. I once told Diana that being born on Christmas Day meant I would never have a surprise birthday party because, duh, everyone would be there to celebrate Christmas. So she did something incredible for me.

A few years ago, on June 25th, to be exact, I thought we were going for a swim at our friend’s house. When we arrived, our friend asked us to enter through the side gate, which I thought was unusual, but I didn’t contest it. As I turned the corner into the backyard, I saw all our friends there, ready with confetti poppers and a sign that said: “Happy Half Birthday.” She got me. She got me good, guys.

Diana has also ensured I get separate gifts for Christmas and my birthday, wrapped in proper wrapping paper, which makes me feel very loved.

All in all, my birthdays have just gotten better and better as the years have progressed. Nowadays, I’m content with going for a nice steak dinner with Diana and maybe having a cigar night with the guys at some point between Christmas and New Year’s. I enjoy attending Mass on Christmas Eve and seeing the kids open presents on Christmas morning while I drink my coffee and admire the handmade birthday cards and drawings. And yes, sometimes I still cry.

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Before you go

I have some questions for you.

1. What was your favorite piece of Santa lore growing up?

2. Does your birthday coincide with a holiday?

3. What is your favorite thing to do on your birthday?