My birthday is December 28th. When I tell people that, most of them feel sorry for me. They understandably think that having my birthday so close to Christmas is a problem. Either it doesn’t get celebrated at all or, if it is, I don’t get any birthday presents because people have just given me gifts. And that is true—at least partially true. Some of my relatives did not send a birthday card or a present, and they would say something to me on Christmas day like “this gift will count as your birthday present, as well as Christmas, ok?” As a young child, when I examined their gift and compared it to what my siblings and cousins received for Christmas, it didn’t seem to me that it was a bigger, better, more expensive gift. But I was not inclined to point that out, since my parents would have upbraided me for being materialistic and ungrateful. So I guess much of the time I did get cheated out of a full-blown birthday celebration.
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