Special birthday traditions in our large family

We are right in the middle of our family’s ‘birthday season’.

In fact, yesterday was the 75th child’s birthday we’ve had…!

Celebrating our children, this year turning 2, 6, 18, 14, and 12, over a span of eight weeks makes it a hectic time of year! Birthdays also often come loaded with emotion. Joy mixed with contemplation, planning and preparation followed by last minute trips to the shops to get the final things on the birthday list. But some birthday traditions have ‘stuck’ over the years, becoming part of the unique fabric of our (now) large family life.

This year I’ve had more time to reflect. Partly in anticipation of my first daughter’s eighteenth birthday – our first ‘kidult’ – a term fondly coined by her reluctance to leap into adulthood and partly because I’m not in the throes of pregnancy or postpartum haze. We have many special birthday traditions. Some began with our eldest, and others have been amended or added to over the years as our family has grown and changed.

One thing I’ve realised is that, in a large family, the chances of a birthday being ‘perfect’ is pretty rare!

A couple of years ago, I had a teeny newborn I was syringe feeding expressed breastmilk to and a house full of nasty respiratory infections. I had to stay at my brother’s house with the baby until the night before my daughter’s 16th birthday. It was such a hard time. I was exhausted and stressed… we were all struggling.

Other years the birthday bubble is burst by family squabbles or a burnt cake. All easy to laugh about in hindsight, but tricky to navigate at the time.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, however, it’s that some parents and children can feel a lot of pressure for birthdays to be perfect. We’ve found that prioritising a few significant traditions can help to anchor us, even in the waves of family highs and lows.

Some families have birthdays neatly spread throughout the whole year; one every couple of months. But not us… we have 4 birthdays in 5 weeks, plus our baby’s the month prior. Once we hit June, it’s a hectic patch until August.

Our first child’s birthdays were a big affair. Looking back at photos I can remember the clothes she wore, the cake I made, and the trip we took to the beach. I can still see the little car she rode over to the fridge where the words ‘Happy 1st birthday’ were written in brand new magnetic alphabet letters.

Those memories are so precious. They marked a new era for our little family. A time when life felt full of adventure and every day had a different rhythm.

Fast forward 17 years and we’ve streamlined our birthday traditions. Now that doesn’t mean they’re simple… In fact, Sam would argue that there are far too many complicating things to remember to do (!) But, as our family has grown, we’ve got more confident in what works and what doesn’t for us.We both have little systems and roles we play in the lead up to the big day.

There have also been things we’ve tried that we’ve just not been able to do with seven children (like themed parties every year!) There has been grief in that and I’ve struggled to let go of some rituals, but we’ve needed to accept the stage of life we’re in and embrace the changes that have taken place.

Sam and I come from very different families. In fact, aside from our faith and the number of siblings, there are very few common factors in our upbringing.

In our marriage, we’ve worked hard to acknowledge, reconcile, and embrace one another’s differences and the expectations we both brought into our relationship.

Even in the area of birthdays, our family of origin has left its mark.

While we didn’t realise it at the time, many of our early birthday traditions came from our own childhood experiences. Over the years some have stopped and others have taken their place. If you’re right at the start of your family life, know that it’s ok to ‘start as you mean to go on’… Take time to talk about what you valued as a child and what you found hard. Think about what made you feel special and which memories you want to carry forward into your own family’s life.

This can be tough to navigate… it may involve feeling vulnerable, or working through things that hurt or felt disappointing. But it is important to realise that we carry our past into our future and often how we start quickly becomes how we continue! As with all areas of marriage, communicating clearly early on in your family life can save a lot of heartache in the years to come.

Alongside communicating with your husband or wife about birthday expectations, recognising each person’s Love Languages is key to making the day special.

As a family we have many birthday traditions (more on those in a moment), but those should never overshadow how each person feels on their birthday. For instance, some of our children really don’t love surprises. They prefer to be prepared and know what is going to happen. Others value quality family time and would rather we all spent time together over being more social.

Sam and I need to be aware of what makes each person feel loved and known to truly honour them on their special day.

There are many aspects to birthdays in our large family and one that we have often wrestled with is gift giving.

Sam and I came from very different backgrounds on this and it still impacts our experience as a family in significant ways.

Birthday presents for one of us were almost always practical. They served a purpose and could vary wildly in size and value from year to year. For the other of us, presents were highly personal and given with a large degree of thought and consideration. Birthday cards were not optional (they still aren’t!) and were to be read before any opening of presents.

We’ve both had to be willing to go with the flow of some traditions. I had always grown up with small ‘un-birthday’ presents for the siblings of the birthday child. This was an idea I loved as a child but one which became unnecessarily complex as our own family increased! Buying an extra 4 or 5 gifts for EVERY birthday simply became untenable.

Over the years and as our own family has grown, we’ve had many conversations about gifts. We haven’t ever set a dollar amount for birthdays and I’ve never kept a record of what we’ve given to which child (much to my frustration at times!)

From a practical perspective, we’ve needed to have some benchmark on the number and monetary value of gifts, but it’s been more of a ‘vibe’ than a specific range.

In a large family, the cost of gifts definitely adds up. This is especially true as your children age. Colouring in books, sticker sets, and fact books are a lot cheaper than musical instruments, iPods, drones, and mountain bikes!

One dynamic we hadn’t thought about was the impact of having several children of the same sex. We discovered that they often look at one another’s gifts and want the exact same thing for their birthday! Think remote control cars, soccer balls, sets of books, and bluetooth speakers.

In recent times we’ve changed this by intentionally simplifying our Christmas giving. Now we focus more on birthdays as the opportunity to promote specific hobbies, buy supplies for an ongoing project, or contribute to a big ticket gift.

This approach has really helped us to support the individual talents of our children and provide resources for them to pursue hobbies at home, too.

Every family adopts and creates their own birthday traditions. Sometimes I’ve seen what another family does and wondered if we could add that into our mix, but I think we have a good balance overall. Here are some of the ways we make our birthdays special.

When our first daughter turned 10, Sam decided to celebrate her life by compiling a photo book of her first ten years. It is one of her most treasured possessions and it’s become a wonderful (though time consuming!) way to collate memories and look back on each person’s childhood.

A few years ago we began a brand new tradition: the Birthday Box. This is a shoe box filled with 10 of the birthday child’s favourite foods. It’s a mix of sweet and savoury and has become one of the most anticipated parts of the birthday morning! It’s funny to see the different personalities of our children and to see who is able to make their birthday box last through until their next birthday!

We have a few ‘rites of passage’ like the option of being given a pocket knife when our children turn 10 years old and a piece of jewellery from us at 16 years old. I also started a tradition this year of writing a letter to our children when they turn 18. These small milestones give them something to look forward to as well.

Finally, we started something a couple of years ago which we call Birthday Blessings. At dinner on every birthday we take time to go around the table and ‘bless’ the birthday person. We share funny stories or memories, attributes or characteristics we admire or are thankful for and we pray for their year ahead. This has been a lovely way to honour one another and truly give thanks for their life and who God has made them to be.

In all this reflecting, it’s also been important to hold space for the things I wish we had done differently.

I wish we had involved our children more in buying or making a gift for the birthday sibling. This has partly been a practical decision because it can be hard to take a tribe of children out to the shops and buy individual gifts. We do this as a Kris Kringle at Christmas but there are too many birthdays in a year! The alternative of making gifts has also felt a bit daunting to me. Visions of helping children whittle spoons or sew costumes for special toys have stopped me from making this work… but sometimes I wish we had encouraged sibling love in that way.

I also wish we had more photos just with us as parents and our birthday child. Looking back, those are some of my favourites.

Spending one on one time as parents with the birthday child would also have been a lovely tradition to begin.

As another hectic birthday season draws to a close this Saturday, and we celebrate our newest 12 year old, here are a few final thoughts.

Keep things simple where you can.

Try not to spend too much on gifts – they really aren’t the most important thing.

Decide what is most important for your family. What do you want them to remember and how can you maximise the love they feel on their birthday?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you and your family celebrate birthdays! What traditions are you creating and cultivating?