Confessions of a party pooper

All professionals have that one season of the year they tend to dread—a time when things seems especially busy and life is just a bit more complicated. For accountants, it’s tax season. For retailers, it’s the holiday season. And for moms, it’s the birthday season. And right now, I am in the midst of mine.
Our three boys were born March, May and June, so in that three-month span we also host three separate, unique and high-maintenance birthday parties. And every year they seem to get more complicated and less fun—at least for me. For some reason, organizing a kid’s birthday party these days is like hosting a major event. Give me a 1,000-person fundraiser to plan any day over a six-year-old’s birthday party. At least those results are measurable.
Birthday parties when I was young were always so simple. Back then the formula for any decent birthday party was pretty basic: activity + silly hats + birthday cake + ice cream = fun. Today, that formula looks more like a complicated calculus equation than a simple addition problem.
For one thing, it seems like every party has to have a theme. I always thought the very nature of any party was the theme. The theme of a swim party is swimming. The theme of a roller skating party is roller skating. The theme of a bowling party is bowling. Get the picture?
Instead, I find myself throwing parties that shamelessly promote every major motion picture, Disney character or popular kids’ TV show. I just hope I don’t owe royalties on any of the invitations I have created along the way, like when I substituted the heads of all four Wiggles characters and Captain Feathersword with the heads of the five members of our family. (If you are wondering who The Wiggles are, consider yourself lucky!)
And what is the deal with piñatas? Seriously—who decided this would be an appropriate game for children? My idea of a good time is not blindfolding a dozen five-year-olds, handing each of them a large stick and then letting them loose. My all-time favorite piñata story was when a friend of mine bought a piñata for her son’s sixth birthday party and didn’t realize she had to fill it with candy herself. After the kids had successfully pummeled that poor piñata to death and it finally split in two, every child frantically ran with their bags in tow to collect the goods, but just as quickly stopped in their tracks and stared at disbelief at the bare floor. They then looked into the empty belly of the colorful beast, and then at the mom, hoping for some viable explanation. She could only shrug her shoulders and say, “Sorry kids. My bad.” Her son will never let her live that one down.
Unfortunately for my friend, the piñata was not only a primary party activity; it was also the source for her goody bags. Which brings up my next question: Who invented the goody bag, and has that person been hunted down and shot? I thought the point of celebrating someone’s birthday was to give, not to receive. And worse than getting a bag full of junk at the end of a soiree is leaving with a present that’s way better than the one you brought.
I will admit to being a goody-bag hypocrite, as I am one of those moms who support a universal ban on goody bags, yet still find myself handing out several varieties of these silly sacks each year. Ironically, lots of kids these days, including my own, ask for donations instead of birthday presents from their friends. I feel so good when I bring something that will be donated to a local animal shelter or school, and then feel ridiculous when we go home with a bag of cheap plastic toys that I would just as soon donate to Goodwill. My husband is the most vocal anti-goody-bag proponent I know, always insisting that we put an end to this pathetic practice. He will even call our friends before one of their kid’s birthday parties to negotiate a goody-bag-free environment.
With one birthday party down and two to go this season, I realize that the end of one celebration is really just the beginning planning stage for the next, as my children will often ask on the way home from their own birthday party, “That was fun. What do you think we should do next year?” I just hope my children know how lucky they are to be able to celebrate their birthdays in such incredible ways. And I hope my husband knows how lucky we are that I found a Darth Vader piñata for the upcoming Star Wars-themed bowling and sleepover party in just a few weeks. I just hope I remember to fill it this time.