Our friends at Faith & Family are discussing, among other things, how to celebrate a birthday during Lent.
Royal Dansk butter cookies offer the prezel shaped sugar cookie.One could celebrate the patronal saint's day instead.
All my siblings and I have February or March birthdays. Our parents held one party for all of us, and after it was over, any remaining birthday cake was frozen until after Lent. As I've gotten older though, I find myself more and more drawn to simple celebration of life within the family and circle of close friends, rather than the rampant consumerism that is so often seen.
As long as the birthday doesn't fall on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, I see no problems in celebrating it as you would if it fell during any other liturgical season, since abstaining from sweets is a personal penance, not a mandatory proscription. You could also celebrate on the Sunday closest, since each Sunday is a little Easter.
How does your family handle this situation?
[Danish butter cookies image credit: Call Me Crochet]
2 comments:
We have one child with a birthday often during Lent (March 6). Our family does not give up sweets as a family but each person chooses his/her own Lenten practice. This year our daughter has given up desserts. But she made an exception on Friday for her brother's birthday. We had no problem with that. A birthday is a feast, a special day.
Normally the birthday child in our household chooses a special dinner on his/her day. This year the birthday was on a Friday in Lent--so I had to say no to the choice of a turkey dinner. We had that on Saturday instead. I gave him some meatless-meal choices and he selected a meal he liked from those choices.
We have celebrated my daughters birthday on her birth date. This year she will be 12 and has the option to celebrate on her birth date or like her father, whose birthday falls in Lent, to celebrate on the Sunday closest to her birthday.
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