Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas?

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Weston Davis lights the candles on his 19th birthday cake.

By Blaine Hill

‘Tis the season for feasts, holiday parties and Christmas shenanigans. Can you imagine a birthday celebration on top of all this?

But December babies say their birthdays have never been eclipsed by the other festivities.

Weston Davis, an electronic media and communications major at Texas Tech, was born on Dec. 15. He said his family always worked hard to make sure his birthday felt special.

“It was like a shorter summer filled with family visits, gifts and food,” he said. “Lots of food.”

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Davis has fond memories of celebrating his birthday as a child.

The holidays were the most wonderful time of the year in his childhood. A few of his gifts might have been merged between his birthday to Christmas, Davis said, but his parents avoided doing this until he had grown up.

Shalyn “Shay” Bond, a graduate student at the Health Sciences Center, said Christmas never overshadowed her December birthday.

“I think my family always made it a point when I was little to separate my birthday from other holidays, making it as special as possible,” Bond said. “They always said my birthday was special because it was so close to Jesus’s birthday, so I thought that was a really cool thing growing up!”

The only downside of her December birthday is that it sometimes falls on independent-study day or during finals.

Her friends still try to make time to see her despite the GPA crunch, although she recalled one time when everyone was busy. But, she said, they all made it up to her when finals were over and everyone could breathe.

“A lot of people think that having a birthday so close to a holiday would make it less special, but I think having a birthday between Thanksgiving and Christmas is pretty cool,” Bond said. “It’s a special time of year where people are joyous and full of thanks and praises. Also if you get lucky, sometimes there will be a snow day, and you get to miss school on your birthday!”

Armand Northcut, a microbiology major at Texas Tech, comes from a family with more than one holiday-season birthday. Listen to him talk about the experience in the audio clip below.

Editor’s note: Weston Davis is married to The Hub@TTU staff member Sarah Self-Walbrick.

About JOUR 4350

JOUR 4350 is the multiplatform news delivery class, which is the capstone class for journalism majors within the College of Media & Communication.