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The Great Birthday Debate
Yesterday, I took my sons to a birthday party. We painted T-shirts with their names pre-printed on them, and we jumped in a Moonwalk. We had cake, ice cream, popcorn, candy, played
mini-golf, essentially a mini-carnival to celebrate a little boy turning four. In the middle of opening presents, the birthday boy started crying because he wanted to play with one of the toys he had just opened, and his Mom wanted him to
open the rest of the twenty presents he had received. Meanwhile fifteen children crowded around the guest of honor each jockeying to have their present opened next. Once the presents were all opened, the children attempted to break open a
Piñata that Dad had to rip to get the multitudes of toys, candy and chocolates to fall out.
For my son's third birthday I invited the local fire department to come and have their trucks here. The kids climbed all over them, watched as the firemen raised and climbed their ladder (which looked
taller than any building here in our city). We had forty guests including children, a self-serve taco bar, cake, ice cream, a Piñata, and goody bags for the kids to take home.
I invited all the children in the neighborhood for two reason s. First, because I knew with the fire
trucks here, the children would want to come see, and second because I didn't want to offend anyone. It all worked out and we had a wonderful time. Alex still talks about his big birthday party.
The hostess of the birthday party ,yesterday, wasn't as fortunate. She limited the invitees to her son's party to fifteen kids, and then upped it to 17 to include the two little boys in the neighborhood
that her son plays with, my three year old and her next-door neighbor. After the party was over, she proceeded to call and invite the children of the nearest neighbors to use up the final two hours of time she had paid for the Moonwalk. I
won't get into the dirty details, but one female neighbor expressed that she felt it was "rude" that her son, who is only 22 months old, was not invited to the 4 year old party and wouldn't allow her son to come and try the
Moonwalk afterward.
Oh, the webs we weave. Living in a neighborhood gets so complicated. I told the party hostess not to sweat it, that the other neighbor would get over it, or she wouldn't, and either way it didn't matter.
It got me to thinking though - why do we have these elaborate birthday celebrations for our children?
I remember very few of my birthday parties, one was a sleepover, when I was ten. That was my last birthday party. After that it was just cake after dinner on my birthday and a present from my parents. One
party was at a local pizza place. There was no clown, no magician, no pony rides. We just ate pizza with a bunch of my friends from school. We were probably obnoxious to the other patrons, but hey, it was my birthday. It was fun, and
simple, and I was satisfied. I remember other birthdays of friends too. For a really big birthday we would go to the roller rink and skate. I hear they do still do that.
 Before you think that I'm old fashioned, I want to point out that I am not yet thirty, so my
childhood wasn't all that long ago. So are birthday parties just another way of keeping up with the Joneses? Are they the new status symbol for the under five set? Or have our kids become so jaded so early that we really have to work to
impress them?
I have to say that Alex still talks about the fire trucks coming here and getting to climb all over them. I wonder though if we hadn't had the fire trucks, and just had all his friends over, would he have
just as good memories? I think he would. I am beginning to think that kid's birthday parties have become not a celebration of a child's milestone, but instead a way for Moms to get together and compare notes. I know for a fact that there
is competition for ideas for a party. For instance, the same day that I had planned Alex's party, my neighbor had another birthday to go to, also fireman-themed. She asked, once she told me, if I was going to change my theme. No, I said,
why should I? She told me that Alex's party wouldn't be unique. Maybe the theme wouldn't be unique, but Alex is unique and he picked the party theme, so the firemen stayed.
It could be that I am alone in my thinking that we have gone beyond good sense in having birthday parties for our kids. It could be that I happen to live in an area where parties of this sort are
prevalent; but it is isolated to narrow pockets of suburban life. Regardless, I have had it with the Joneses and the merry-go-round of keeping up.
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