We used to go to shul a lot. My wife and I would punch the clock most weeks, even when we no longer had too, after the conversion paperwork came through. We’d connect with the community, enjoy the service, gorge ourselves on kiddush fishballs. Bagging ourselves tickets for this Yom Kippur, only our second visit in as many years, I noted how Covid or not, our attendance has plummeted, and given the festival, I resolved to rectify the situation. Then, during the reading of the Haftorah where Jonah gets eaten and I was really missing fishballs, I had an epiphany. Even as much as I was terrified of defying God’s will, I knew I was in a lost fight. It’s not the schlep into town with five offspring, it’s not the indignity of me being forced to wear adult attire, it’s not fighting off our kids trying to steal all our fishballs. It’s the never-ending onslaught of harrowing, torturous, excruciating, birthday parties.
Whenever the impolite quantity of our brood comes up in conversation, like a humble martyr I intone that after the third there’s really no difference. But now that I’ve finally identified the bane of my existence, the source of so much stress and hassle, I can see how wrong I’ve been. Five children multiplied by thirty classmates means 150 birthday parties every pandemic free year. Admittedly not every one of my children is popular enough to be invited to every party, a trait I’ve actively encouraged if it means less time on the North Circular, and while the more thoughtful, lazy and parsimonious parents will organise joint celebrations, our fridge is nonetheless a patchwork of invites, my WhatsApp an endless scroll of birthday groups. Factoring in school holidays, it inevitably means that onto every single term-time weekend clings multiple parasitic birthday parties, sucking all hope at restoration away.
Being the only driver in the family, working weekend nights, ensures that all the children’s entertainers, every clown, animal wrangler, and disco MC, now recognises me on sight. I’m the ghost of birthday present last and future, an exhausted apparition shuffling about various church halls and scout centres, mumbling along to their act word for word, my eyes deader than their own. Attending a Jewish school only exacerbates the issue. I imagine every Jewish school has a spectrum of observance, with ours running from observant Masorti, to not wanting to antagonise the observant Masorti. Thus most of the parties bunch up on Sundays. One brave family with booking issues broke the dam by going for a Saturday, but trust me, you wouldn’t want to be part of that resulting email chain.
Personally I’d love to be shomer Shabbos, but that’s when a good chunk of my work occurs and someone has to pay for the all birthday cards. Two pounds X 150 = gigging Friday nights. As it is, the rest of the week is already accounted for searching out presents. Occasionally I’ll find a great deal and bulk-buy, forgetting how quickly the toy cycle moves. I’m still trying shift a load of Star Wars Force Awakens Rey dolls. They’ve been in the loft for six years, next to the regift presents, which include an actual dart board with actual darts bought for our eldest’s sixth birthday. I could never work out if it was a message or just because the family are Israeli.
In the struggle between me being allowed at least one-sleep in, or going to shul, I turned once again for advice to my Rabbi Googleberg. First glance wasn’t comforting, turns out that following the Hebrew calendar we also all have a Jewish birthday. In a panic I immediately slammed my laptop shut, that’s the opposite of what I need, an extra birthday!
Wait, didn’t I read that for Jehovah Witnesses, the only birthday they celebrate is Jesus’s?. Maybe converting is the answer, maybe I could get a column in The Watchtower. But even with just one party, for a Jewish kid, that can elicit a lot of peer pressure, ‘Why did the Sherlings give gold this year, I thought we all agreed we were just sticking with myrrh?’ And I suspect that all that the time saved would instead have to be spent door knocking.
Actually it turns out that the Torah does hold the answer after all, with the only mention of a birthday party being the Pharaoh’s. Our forebears just weren’t so big on the whole birthday thing, with King Solomon stating, “The day of death is better than the day of one’s birth.” That’s why we’ve got so many death rituals — just being born isn’t enough, we celebrate a life’s achievements. Which is what I shall now explain to all of my children’s friends, RSVPing that we’ll be happy to attend their little shindig, in 80 to 90 years. In the meantime, would they like a Rey doll to hold them over?
