Hah, my birthday is during the winter holidays and I'm long used to just celebrating the fact we all survived that hectic season one more time.
When I was a kid though, I could get annoyed in midsummer or autumn when one of my brothers would have a birthday that involved getting a special dinner, a cake and presents "out of the blue".. whereas I had one or two great aunts who in wintertime would offer me a single --usually quite nice-- present during the Christmas holidays with a tag that said, alas, "Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday!"
Our tradition was that one of the younger kids would play Santa, taking gifts from under the tree and reading the tags so to hand them to the proper recipient while we were opening presents. Once in awhile then, if someone visiting us at the holidays had brought me two gifts and both landed under the Christmas tree, there would sometimes be this gasp and utterance of "Oh no not that one today, child, that one's for her birthday later on" and the bro would --enthusiastically, of course 💥💥💥💥💥 -- grab the present back out of my hands even as I was trying to untie the ribbon.
Since my actual birthday was pretty low key --to overstate the natural level of enthusiasm for making a big deal of anything for awhile after Christmas-- I'd just as soon have opened the birthday gifts while everyone was still in a celebratory mood!
As the years go by one can tend to be grateful that not all one's acquaintances remark on the totting up of another year. I do figure it's way better to have my birthday show up on the calendar again than not to be around for it, but I don't mind any more that it still tends to fade into the Christmas season's celebrations.
