Two celebrations in one

Pausing before Christmas day rushes forward

Strong Offers and Links to Ponder will return next Thursday, January 1, 2026.

My father’s birthday was on Christmas Day, 1927.

He was born into the world already sharing space—with carols and candles, with other people’s joy. Long before I understood what that meant, my mother made sure we did not let one eclipse the other.

In our house, Christmas morning unfolded in two distinct acts. There were Christmas presents from Santa in the living room with the tree lights blinking softly in the corner. And then there were the birthday gifts—wrapped in unmistakably birthday paper—bright balloons and confetti and colors that had nothing to do with the season. Those gifts were given at breakfast, before the day took on its larger, louder momentum.

This mattered to my parents. It mattered that my father was not swallowed whole by Christmas.

I didn’t know then that this careful separation was an act of love, or maybe even of resistance. I only knew that birthdays were supposed to be their own thing. They were about one person, one life. They were not meant to be absorbed into a holiday meant for everyone.

My father died in 1980, when he was 53. I was still young enough to believe that 53 was old, and still young enough to be wrong about almost everything that mattered.

Now, of course, 53 feels impossibly young.

After he died, Christmas changed shape, as it does after any loss. Traditions remain, but they are hollowed out in places. The tree still goes up. The food is still prepared. But absence becomes another guest at the table—quiet, uninvited, and impossible to ignore.

What disappeared most completely was his birthday.

There were no more gifts wrapped in birthday paper. No quiet acknowledgment at breakfast. The day collapsed in on itself, becoming only Christmas, as if the world had decided that one celebration was enough.

For years, I didn’t consciously notice this. Loss often works that way—it hides in plain sight. But something was missing, and I felt it most acutely in the morning, when the day was still ours, before it belonged to anyone else.

Now, decades later, I find myself thinking about what my parents were really teaching us all along.

They were teaching us that a person deserves to be seen clearly, even when the world is busy looking elsewhere. That one life is not interchangeable with a holiday, no matter how beloved. That joy shared does not cancel the need for joy that is specific.

They were teaching us how to pay attention.

On Christmas morning now, I sometimes pause before the day rushes forward. I think of my father at 53—an age he never got to move beyond. I think of the careful way my mother insisted on honoring him separately, distinctly, deliberately.

And I think about how easy it is, in life, to let people blur into the background noise of everything else that demands our attention.

Remembering him today feels like reclaiming something small but essential. A refusal to let his life be reduced to a footnote in someone else’s celebration.

So this is my quiet acknowledgment.

Happy birthday, Daddy.

You were never just Christmas.

Love,

Patti