.My Grinch.

Try and think of what the two worst days of the year to have your birthday would be. I bet you came up with December 25th or 26th. Sadly, this is the case for my poor husband. Cheyenne was born on December 26th and as such he has a very bitter hatred of both Christmas and his birthday.

Most of his life has been spent being disappointed with December and all of the merry making only makes it worse. This is our 6th December together and each year I go to great lengths to try and make both Christmas and his birthday enjoyable and I'm as successful as is possible to be with someone whose motto is "someday when I rule the world I'm going to cancel Christmas and make a new holiday called Cheyennemas".

The trick I've found is to make sure that he gets the same amount of Christmas gifts as he would if his birthday was any other day of the year and to do the same with birthday gifts. On his birthday the word "Christmas" is strictly forbidden. The gifts that he gets on his birthday are in the most birthday-ish of paper along with birthday cards that have nothing green or red on them. He gets a cake that isnt "wintry" {often either a carrot cake or cheesecake}. I've enlisted my parents and our friends in on the "operation: make Chey like his birthday" project for years now and we've made some headway.

As for liking Christmas, well, that's a harder nut to crack. My trump card for years has been the idea of celebrating with a child/children so that he can get a kind of "do over" on the Christmas front by living through them. Amelia has a lot on her little plate without being aware of it. Luckily it seems to be working - kind of. I think next year and in subsequent ones when she's more "into" the holiday he'll come out of his Grinchy shell.

For now it's still a bit like pulling teeth. Any ideas?