My son’s birthday is this weekend. He does not relish big birthday parties but he was bummed that all of this stay-at-home and self-quarantine was happening during his birthday. It is a first-world problem but my son was disappointed he could not celebrate his birthday with his extended family and some of his friends. He asked if we could “move his birthday celebration to June” or sometime after everything returned back to normal. I was a little sad for him.
Well, I decided that my wife and I could make this birthday MORE special for him than just his usual birthday celebration during normal times. It will not be pizza with his friends, or a movie with his cousins, but it will be something UNIQUE.
Why am I telling you about my son’s birthday? I decided to write this post because I am sure everyone has something special coming up that they would normally celebrate in a certain way. It could be Easter, it could be an anniversary, or it could be a birthday. Why not make your own upcoming celebration something positive, unique and something you will look back on with a smile for years to come.
Make Your Celebration Special Like the Movies
We have all seen the movies where the perfect mom, dad, husband, wife, etc. plans the special event when something has gotten in the way of initial plans. Some examples: the candlelight dinner under the lights in the park; the special guest for the kid’s birthday party; the perfect small wedding under the large oak tree with the stream running behind it. We all watch these perfect moments on the movie screen but decide to go to a nice, but normal, restaurant for our anniversary, go to laser tag and eat pizza for our kids birthday party, etc. Well, we cannot do a lot of those “standard” celebrations right now so we should take the extra time we have to get creative and create some “special” celebrations during this time of crisis.
You can read stories about how Jews found unique ways to celebrate times like Hanukkah during World War II and the Holocaust. They got creative but made these times special and something for their people to find strength in. Stay-at-home is no Holocaust but it is a time of challenges and we can make it where our loved ones feel uniquely loved during this time of difficulty. Take that extra time to be creative and make that memory that your loved ones will remember for years.
Here is what we are planning to do to make my son’s birthday something uniquely special:
- Everything is going to be blue for a day. My son’s favorite color is blue. We were able to buy things to make a blue cake (I mean blue cask, frosting, sprinkles, and candles) and use blue plates, blue cups, blue napkins, blue signs, and blue drinks, to celebrate his birthday.
- We are bringing the movie experience to our living room. There may not be eggs and meat products at the store but there is still plenty of candy. I bought a lot of my son’s favorite candies and we are going to create special candy bags for the family, set-up our living room in a theater type format, and eat popcorn and candy while we watch a move my son wants to watch. A lot of times my wife or me is moving around while the kids watch a movie we are not interested in but we have already talked and we are going to make this as much of a real movie experience as possible.
- We are enjoying a night under the stars. We are planning a small camping trip over the summer but we wanted to bring camping to our backyard for my son’s birthday. We are setting up a tent and sleeping bags and we are going to make s’mores, tell camp stories, and spend a night under the stars but in our backyard. We might wake up with sore backs but it will be something our son will remember.
- Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins are doing a drive-by to sing Happy Birthday. My son’s aunt and my parents came up with their own idea to do a surprise drive-by, sing happy birthday to my son, and drop-off (in a safe way) In-N-Out hamburgers and fries for my son for his birthday lunch. He will be completely surprised and I think he will love this thoughtful outreach.
I would love to hear about any creative ways you are celebrating your loved ones and their special moments during this time where so many of the ways we are used to celebrating are unavailable to us. I am sure there are so many inspirational stories out there.
Stay positive!
Leave a Reply