Confessions of a Christmas Baby

Yes, I’m a Christmas baby. And it’s incredibly fascinating the effects it has had on me. As a self-aware adult I’ve been spending some time untangling it all this year.

As a kid, I didn’t know anything else. I got Christmas presents and birthday presents. At family gatherings I would be wished a Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday. It all seemed pretty normal to me.

As I got older, I realized that I didn’t have ‘traditional’ birthday parties.  But, again, that wasn’t such a big deal because as a family of four kids with a really limited income, none of us had birthday parties.  My mom’s rule was we could have three parties, when we were five, ten and fifteen.  So, not having parties wasn’t so strange either.

And now, as an adult, I’ve realized I have problems with birthdays.   No, it’s not the ‘I’m getting older’ thing.  I’ll be 43 in few days and it really doesn’t mean much to me. I’m grateful for the experience of time but I’m as young as I imagine myself to be.

Here’s how it shows up: I declared a few years back that we would not be doing the whole birthday cake and singing thing on Christmas anymore. With kids, I just felt it got in the way of Christmas  – which I love. So, to appease everyone else I picked a day they could acknowledge and that has now been the winter solstice, December 21. Now what has happened is that I can’t hide behind the excuse of Christmas day for not having a party. And I think that’s what has really brought my weirdness to light.

So my problem with birthdays is not about age. Oddly, it’s about being seen.

Maybe you have this too – that quiet undercurrent of not shining too big or bright, not drawing too much attention to yourself, not distinguishing yourself too much from others. Why? Because doing so means that you aren’t really a part of your tribe/family/group any longer. It conjurs up feelings and fears of isolation and ostracism. (And I also know that as a Mexican American this is embedded in the culture. Gotta love how all this works.)

Anyone who knows me will think this is downright weird. I’m comfortably self-confident and have no problem stepping right up to the front to take care of things that need to be dealt with. And I have positively no issue speaking my mind or going against the norm.  That’s why this not-being-seen thing is so odd – and so hard to spot – for me.

Of course the irony in this is that my gift is ‘seeing’, which I do, and have done, for others as friends and clients all the time. It’s the seeing through the confusion, the blocks, the chaos and complexity  in their life and work – right through to the feeling, solution or experience that is needed right at that moment.

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday!

Isn’t it just priceless then that deep in my unconscious I’ve been carrying and cultivating a fear of being seen?

I’m proud to share that for this glorious birthday, I’m giving that piece of myself back to me. The piece that has hidden away behind the fear.

I see me. And I invite everyone else to do so as well. I have some big things on my agenda for the year and years ahead and I certainly need to be seen to get them done.

Give yourself the gift of you this Christmas. I have.