Family, Fantasy, holidays, Uncategorized

Memorial Day Birthday

31 Comments

Photo credit: Justin Casey

My sister is grumpy today. 

For the first twelve years of her life, her birthday was a holiday.  No school or parents working on her day.  Her day.  Then in 1971, Memorial Day became one of the “Monday holidays” which means that her birthday only lands on a holiday every seven or eight years.  This year, when it falls almost a full week before her birthday, is one that she particularly dislikes.  Even after five decades, she still takes this personally.

It never bothered me as a kid that she had her birthday on a holiday.  My folks didn’t actually make a bigger deal about it because of the holiday and I still got to go to the pool (in Missouri, the public pools

usually opened on Memorial Day).  I still got the dinner of my choice and a birthday cake with lots of frosting.  All good, even with no holiday in sight.

My birthday is in August.  There are only two months during the year that don’t have big, recognized holidays in them.  August is one of them.  June is the other, but I always thought June redeemed itself by having the end of school.  And, of course, since I moved to Minnesota, I have always counted the State Fair as a holiday, thereby making August one of the best holiday months.

Even though we won’t be having the Great Minnesota Get Together this year, I don’t hold August responsible for that.  But my sister probably would.

If you could move your birthday to a holiday, which holiday would you choose?  And why?

31 thoughts on “Memorial Day Birthday”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    My birthday is also in August, also, and I share it with the late Princess Margaret, Jim McMahon, the Bears’ former quarterback, and my niece’s husband. I think the holiday I would like is July 4–What is better than fireworks, large parties, and barbecue? Nothing much.

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    1. I agree, the fireworks at the end of the day on your birthday it’s a fabulous idea. I share my birthday with Louis Armstrong and Barack Obama and I just found out last year, Meghan Markle.

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  2. my birthday is the day after george washington’s bd,
    remember back when we were kids they would alternate between lincoln’s birthday and washington’s bd as the day we would celebrate and take the holiday? every other year the day before my birthday wold be a day off . i can’t remember what they did if it was washington’s year and it fell on a saturday.
    birthdays are a day of reflection and inner analysis for me.
    other people celebrate on an approximate date that is convenient but i have always insisted it be the day the real day rather than on the weekend or night of common availability.
    birthdays are
    a big deal
    you only get a hundred of them and they are spaced
    so far apart
    a good
    measure
    of how you’re doing
    yesterday was dylan’s birthday
    79
    i think we should make dylan’s birthday a celebrated holiday
    but end of may is already a pretty glorious month. i have 2 kids with june birthdays and it is redundant to make june a celebration month. it’s already great. february needs a birthday to spruce it up a bit and you can have stone crab for
    your birthday dinner just before they go away

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    2. Hey, tim, you were born on the same day as my father. Not the same year, of course, unless you are a surprisingly youthful looking guy of 114. We used to get confused about the date of Dad’s birthday. My mother explained that once by noting, “George was born on the day George Washington wasn’t.” Some of her comments had a Gracie Allen quality.

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  3. My birthday is 11 days before Christmas and as a kid I almost always hated that. People were too preoccupied with getting ready for their Christmas celebrations to remember my special day. Occasionally I received “combination” birthday/Christmas gifts from family members. Once Christmas was over, I had to wait 11 and a half months before getting gifts again. Any clothing gifts were for winter weather. What I really wanted was a birthday in June so there would only be six months between presents. The only thing worse was (and still is) a birthday in the few days after Christmas. Of course, I am no longer concerned with gifts and generally don’t do anything special – though I am grateful to still be having birthdays! If I had to have a birthday on a holiday, I’d probably pick 4th of July.

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  4. Thanksgiving might be a good day for a birthday, what with the feast being prepared and people wanting to be together. Ascension Day and Pentcost might be nice days for birthdays, and they are sort of big holidays in many European countries. They also come in the spring after Easter,

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  5. My birthday is the day before Groundhogs Day, and I always cringed about that. Who wants to be associated with a pudgy rodent? I believe my birthday is also St. Brigid’s Day, and she’s not so bad.

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  6. My birthday could have been April Fool’s Day. My mother was asked to pick a date for a scheduled C-section, and the doctor did surgeries on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My mother thought I’d get teased if my birthday fell on April Fool’s Day, so she opted for Thursday the 3rd.

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  7. Hi-

    Sometimes, like this year, my Birthday falls on Mothers Day. Mom wrote me a really sweet letter this year about “The Day You were Born” and she talked about taking all the other kids to church, then calling either her mom or sister to come get them afterward, and then going to the hospital. I was born at 11:35. Which is pretty impressive! I don’t know what time they got to church if I was born that soon. Course I was #5 so she knew what she was doing.
    The hospital had steak dinners for the new moms, but she wasn’t ready to eat lunch. Dad came back in the evening after milking and he got steak too then.

    Having my Birthday on Mothers Day is kinda nice. Gives me and mom an extra connection. Gifts don’t really change but we’re not big on gifts anyway.

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  8. I am a September baby. Sophia Loren and Jelly Roll Morton are the famous people I remember who share my day. Growing up, we would celebrate all of the family September birthdays together. Since this meant I got to spend time with my cousins (two of the three are also September babies), I was all for it. My grandfather and my youngest cousin share a birthday. Another cousin is precisely 51 weeks younger than me. A great aunt and a cousin once-removed also are September. It almost made up for being at the start of the school year – before you had made new friends in class beyond the “regular” friends from the block, so bringing a treat to school felt less special than it did by March… except my freshman year of college when Mom showed up with a Bundt cake at my dorm. I was the most popular kid then – everyone was homesick, and it was a little taste of home for everyone.

    Today is Darling Daughter’s 16th birthday. We have had a mini celebration with family via Zoom (there was cake… but just at our house), a friend is stopping by later, and she may go out to meet another friend or two at a park – all of this keeping the friends she would love to hug at the requisite distance. Sigh.

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    2. There are several May birthdays in my immediate family. Normally we try to get together for a picnic to celebrate all of them plus Mother’s Day, anniversary’s and whatever else we
      Can lump in there.

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  9. Bit of a side note; last year this time, I was just getting out of the hospital from my cellulitis. And Edith was down here for testing before her transplant and we had texted. So I’ve been thinking of her this week.

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      1. It must be in the air. The prairie smoke that LJB gave me last spring when she was cleaning up her garden is flourishing, and I was just admiring it over the weekend when I was putting out more mulch.

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        1. I got a chunk of her Bleeding Heart that I divided into three plants. One of them is enormous and I think of her every time I look at it.

          Liked by 6 people

  10. My birthday is at the end of April. I remember only one birthday party from my childhood. My Uncle Leo had covered our dining table with a heavy white paper from a large roll, and he had decorated it by drawing large pictures of Donald Duck, Micky and Minnie Mouse, Goofy and other Disney characters. It may have been my sixth or seventh birthday, I remember it was before I started school. As a birthday gift he gave me a big box of brand new crayons so I could color to my heart’s content. He also let me have the rest of that roll of paper so I could draw big pictures for myself. I am possibly the least talented draw-er ever, but it wasn’t for lack encouragement from Uncle Leo.

    I don’t know that I’d move my birthday, and certainly not to a holiday that includes setting off fireworks. But if I did, I’d move to a time when it’s just a tad warmer than it usually is at the end of April, a time when a nice picnic lunch would be appropriate.

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    3. Uncle Leo died a few months ago after years of deep dementia. He was truly a character in his day.

      By trade he was painter, and ran his own firm for many years. His oldest son is now carrying on the business. No one was neutral about Leo. He was the best at his trade, but his independent streak and propensity for saying out loud what most people only think, caused a lot of strife in his life. I loved him dearly, and treasure the memory of him.

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  11. My birthday, March 26, is shared with Robert Frost, Leonard Nimoy, and Diana Ross, I see from the internet. It occasionally falls on Easter, and I guess I would just keep it there. I love having it in the spring, though like PJ, I wouldn’t mind it if was a bit warmer.

    Speaking of warmer, is it stinking hot where you all are? Weather link says it’s just 78 here, so it must be the humidity. I just finished complaining because it was too cool, and now I’m complaining about the heat already. Sigh…

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  12. I just came in from finishing up planting my garden. I was gifted with a swallowtail butterfly hanging out with me for a bit. It was mostly yellow with blue markings on its tail. Made my day.

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  13. I just remembered an Easter Birthday story. 1978 was one year when my birthday landed on Easter. Husband and I and had just gotten together. We were also housemates… well, apartment mates, on 27th and Dupont in S. Mpls. I got up on Easter morning, walked out to the kitchen to fine a giant stuffed rabbit propped up on a chair at the table. I remember being just stunned, and then laughing… One of Husband’s sisters had helped him sew this thing for my birthday. One of the best presents I ever got.

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