Our Family Birthday Party

Somewhere in the blurry midst of moving multiple times and welcoming four children we found ourselves on our anniversary in a new-ish town with no childcare, a new baby, no plans and very full arms.

It was tempting to blow past the day altogether, to write it off honoring our marriage and what God had done in and through it as a luxury afforded to those whose lives were arranged differently—closer to family, perhaps, or not in a new place with no real grasp on the babysitter landscape.

But one night, as our oldest who was five started with the questions about weddings and marriage, I told her our wedding anniversary was like our family’s birthday—the day “we” were born.

And that year, we had our very first Family Birthday Party. And ever since, it has been a simple and sweet way to mark God’s faithfulness in our marriage that we’ve all come to look forward to in these little years when elaborate anniversary trips or dates aren’t always possible, particularly on the actual day of.

Since the inception of this little tradition, my sister-in-law has begun gifting us childcare on or around our anniversary so that we can have a date and spend time just the two of us, which has been so lovely…but the FBP lives on!

Here’s our yearly Family Birthday Party game plan:

1. We have a universal favorite family meal. For us this has looked like ordering through Goldbelly from our favorite lobster shack in Maine, which happens to also send all the fun swag (napkins and buttons and stickers!) along with their famous lobster rolls.

2. We, of course, bake a family birthday cake. This is especially fun because everyone gets to sing and everyone gets to blow out the candle.

3. We watch our wedding video together (and everyone asks why they weren’t there, if we can get married again, if they can wear my wedding dress someday, etc. etc.)

4. We go around the dinner table and say something we are grateful to God for doing in the life of our family over the past year and what we are praying for in the year ahead (the prayers at this age are completely classic).

5. We pray a collect (see below for some ideas) over our marriage and family.

In the future, I may start jazzing things with some of our favorite birthday decorations and a balloon for each year we’ve been married (an idea I had, quite literally, just now when typing this). I would also love to have this be the day when we open our “Family Yearbook” from the year prior, which, of course, requires that I sort our photos accordingly.

Yet, as with many traditions, I must always force myself to remember that it is the repeated sustainable simplicity—the almost automatic nature of them—that truly allows them to be woven tightly into the fabric of a family’s culture and yearly calendar.

Below are two collects from the 2019 Book of Common Prayer that would be meaningful to pray at a Family Birthday Party, substituting in the second, “our family” or “the {last name} family” and “our"/us” respectively.

Celebrating the beginning of our family together has also encouraged us as a married couple to reflect on the “why” of our marriage on the whole, with four sweet faces gathered around the table alongside us serving as a very present, tangible testament to God’s goodness and faithfulness in our lives, in seasons of both want and in plenty.