My birthday is 12 days after Christmas. Always has been always will be, unfortunately. I have had to deal with this my whole life, and as a kid, it wasn't as ideal as you think it would be.

Initially, for kids, you may think it's great because they get lots of presents in the matter of a month. But actually, that's not the case. On one hand, yes, if I didn't get something I wanted for Christmas, I could just ask for it for my birthday. But on the other hand, as a kid, I have one month to ask for everything I may want for the whole year. It was a lot of pressure because what if something cool came out in the middle of the year? By the time Christmas or my birthday came around, it was old news.

OK, that paragraph may have sounded a little bratty, but that's what kids think. Whenever I grew up a little, different problems with my birthday arose.

In high school, I didn't enjoy my birthday either. My birthday is January 6th. That is right at the beginning of the second semester. If we started school by then, my birthday was almost the first day back, and no one remembered until they got to school. If we hadn't started school, no one remembered either. And let me tell you, being a hormonal teenage girl in high school if people didn't remember your birthday, it felt personal.

And now I am in college. Some colleges have a long winter break that wraps up in the middle of January. Not mine. My school starts that first week of January after New Years. This means that my birthday may fall on the first day back AGAIN. But lucky me, this year it falls on the day before the semester begins, which is a travel day for me. This year I get to spend my birthday on an airplane.

This is all coming from the deep heart of someone with a birthday right around Christmas. I know there are plenty of you out there in this boat with me. Some of you are even closer to Christmas than I am. Some are even ON Christmas. For those of you with this case, I just want you to know, we are praying for you. We are there if you need a hand to hold during this hard time. It can't be easy on you, we know. We just want you to know that we are here if you need someone to talk to. We can get through this season together.

Merry Christmas everyone, and a happy birthday too.