Showing posts with label #birthdayparty #celebrations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #birthdayparty #celebrations. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Of Celebrations and Holidays by Konnie Enos


Even in stressful times, life still goes on. Babies are born, couples get married, and people still have other events, such as birthdays, to celebrate. Only in times like these, people have to change their plans.
No large family gatherings to celebrate Easter, or Mother’s Day. You can’t go to church or throw a birthday party. You can’t even have that regular lunch date with your friends. Planners have to cancel meetings, events, conferences, etc.
Parents who had been planning big parties to celebrate milestone birthdays, or Easter, with their children, find themselves having to scale back, regroup, and re-plan the whole affair.
My granddaughter celebrated both her first birthday and Easter home alone with just her parents. (Okay, technically last year was her first Easter, but she’d only been a few weeks old then.) My niece wanted to give a birthday party to her youngest, inviting all her friends. My husband and I both had conferences we had paid to attend. People all over the place are changing plans because of this.
I’ve heard of numerous churches finding ways to have their church meetings online (ZOOM, etc.) My church changed its semi-annual largest meeting to a completely online version without the large gathering of believers. My local congregation is posting our weekly lessons online.
My daughter planned my granddaughter’s birthday party to be online. The only ones in the room with her for her big day were her mom and dad. Her aunts, uncles, and grandparents had to watch it on Facebook. My niece asked about celebrating her daughter’s birthday and I suggested she do something similar. Easter for my granddaughter was also just with her parents with pictures posted after the fact. In our house? The day after Easter, we finally got some candy because some members complained about not having any, though that’s about all we did to celebrate it. (My kids are all adults.)
Now I like to plan for birthday celebrations just as I start shopping for Christmas almost as soon as the New Year starts. Because of this, I usually have all the gifts I’m getting my youngest son for the entire year purchased sometime in March. April at the latest.
This year?
Well first, I was working full-time and had no energy for shopping. Then we were in lockdown. By early April, my son asked me if I’d gotten his gift yet. I think I shocked him when I told him no. What’s worse, I didn’t even do the shopping that week. It was mid-April before I even considered it.
First, I asked all my family members to give me ideas for gifts for them. Once I started getting the suggestions back, I started shopping. Of course, the first one I got gifts for was my son, then my sister and her sister-in-law. Next, I’ll get them for my middle daughter. (I do them in order of birthdays.)
What finally spurred me into action?
My youngest son came and sat down beside me, with a long face. “My birthday is in a couple weeks.”
“I know.”
“Are we even going to be able to celebrate it?”
My immediate response was, “Of course.” Then I got to thinking about everything. Of course, I set to work making sure he’d get a gift, but I also thought of everything my daughter and niece had to go through to celebrate their daughters’ birthdays. I was thinking about how different their celebrations had to be than what their mom’s had wanted them to be. How many people are celebrating their birthdays in ways very different than they are used to?
My son is high functioning autistic. He doesn’t handle change very well.
Then it dawned on me.
We are going to celebrate his birthday exactly as we always celebrate it. At home, just those family members who live in this house. He picks the cake, dinner, and ice cream. We sing “Happy Birthday” to him. He opens any presents we got him.
For him, nothing needs to change because how we usually celebrate works just fine during all of this.
So Friday, we’re going to get ice cream and make a cake and pizza. We’re going to eat pizza and sing to him before we cut the cake. If his gift has arrived yet (which it isn’t scheduled to), he’ll open it. Then we’ll have cake and ice cream. Just like we always do.
It’s nice to know not everything has to change when the whole world is topsy-turvy.
So happy nineteenth birthday, Royce. I hope you have a day just like normal because I know you’d prefer it.
Smile. Make the day a brighter day.