Nipping It In The Bud: How and Why We Celebrate Friends, Not Toys, At Our Birthday Party

By Katharine Grubb

A few years ago, my oldest decided she wanted to have a birthday party and invite all of her new friends over. Nine comes only once, after all. We counted up all the names, added in her two cousins, her seven-year-old sister, and her two little brothers and we came up with a list totaling twelve. Twelve! Up until that spring, the biggest celebration we ever hosted involved two friends, not counting Grammy and Grampy. 

I could have been a wet blanket and refused to meet her desires. After all, the expense and effort of a birthday party will fall upon me, her mother. On the other hand, all of us had prayed for more relationships for our girls, and now we had them. A celebration would be a good and happy thing. So she and I started planning.

I am naturally lazy, so I can certainly see the appeal of letting some “Party Planner” at Chuck E. Cheese or Celebration Station do all the work. For the sake of this article, I investigated how much Chuck E. Cheese would charge for the same number of guests. I nearly fell off my chair when I read $168! This includes, for each child of course, 2 slices of pizza, 1 piece of cake, several game tokens, a soft drink and atmosphere that I would compare to a G-Rated Las Vegas. Oh, and someone else cleans up. 

As I got over my shock and got back in my chair, I realized that for me, frugality always trumps laziness. How interesting. I didn’t know that virtues like thrift would be my companions in this party planning business. Oh dear. If I plan this party underscoring restraint rather than excess, gentleness over obnoxiousness, and things of beauty over things of molded plastic from Toys R Us, then we’re going to be different. My daughter will be different. 

Can she and I handle it? 

What is a mother to do? 

My daughter, being eight years old, naturally wanted a horse party. I understood this meant horse-themed games, not a real pony for rides at $100 an hour. But while we were gardening together one day, I had an idea. I gently suggested to her that instead of a toy, perhaps her little friends could bring her a perennial for our, I mean her, garden? Could we do horses and flowers? 

She loved the idea. 

We would still have our horse-themed activities, but her gifts, the ones that were her heart’s desires would come from the people who loved her most: her parents and her grandparents. 

She happily agreed and that week, as she drew out her little homemade invitations, inside I wrote: "please bring a contribution for our perennial garden so that we can remember this happy day with our friends for years to come." 

So far, so good. 

Despite this very virtuous beginning, I began to have doubts about the flower thing. I really wondered what these moms would think, some of whom we didn’t know very well at all. So, over the course of the next few days, I mentally made a list of the benefits of this little idea and I was surprised at how encouraged I was. 

Perhaps this little flower alternative would: 

   1. Bless busy moms. I would imagine digging up a lily from your backyard is infinitely easier

       than second-guessing yourself at your local Wal-Mart’s toy department. Also, two of our

       guests are from families of six children. Their moms need less to do, not more.
   2. Minimize comparisons. Not everyone can bring a $40 chemistry set. Flowers have a way

       of equalizing the whole matter. 

   3. Avoid the Bratz doll disaster of Christmas 2006. All I’m going to say about this is that the

       look of shock on my face nearly ruined my relationship with our generous, although

       misguided, Auntie June. 

   4. Subtly encourage other moms toward restraint, although I probably have an over-inflated

       perception of my trend-setting abilities. 

   5. Save space. I have absolutely no room for ten new toys. 

   6. Minimize attitudes of entitlement. I am not planning on raising a spoiled princess. 

   7. Set precedents. I have four children younger than the birthday girl. The other children

       need to know how our family handles these types of situations. 

   8. Draw a line in the sand for me. If I lead in the area of contentment, then hopefully, we’ll

       never see the need to go completely overboard at Build-A-Bear, even if we can afford it.

   9. Make us a little more immune to the influences of pop culture. 

I reassured myself with this conclusion: My family culture is important to me. I am willing to be creatively sacrificial for the sake of our character, no matter what others think. 

The party was scheduled for Sunday, May 27 from 3:00-6:00. All across our backyard, a dozen 5-9 year olds, galloped, whinnied and reared while I instructed them in guessing games, variations of tag, a relay race, and a modified board game. We beat that homemade carrot-shaped pinata for a good half hour before we gave up and ripped into it. Then we ate watermelon, horse-shaped PBJ sandwiches, sorbet and horse head shaped birthday cake. All of the children were delightful and had a grand time. The mothers were all grateful and happy about our request. Some did spend a lot (in my opinion) on their gifts, others just dug up what they had available. My only regret was that each guest didn’t plant his or her flowers with my daughter. But by the time the cake was passed out, I nearly was too. 

And our expenses? We spent $11 on ordinary white bags (on which my daughter drew pictures of horses), bouncy balls, unicorn pencils (the store was out of horses), Blow-pops and homemade bookmarks for each guest. We bought the jumbo bag of candy (about $10) at Costco for the pinata and everything else came from things already in our house. (Except for the chocolate licorice whips which is a must, since there has to be a mane on the horse head cake.) 

The next day, my daughter and I spent the afternoon deciding where her beautiful flowers- the phlox from Iris, the Black-Eye Susan from Naomi, the rose from Anna, the lilies-of-the -valley from the other Anna, the poppies from Isabella, the daisy from Alyssa and the peony from Lucie -should be planted. 

I asked her, “Did you enjoy your party?” 

“Oh, Mommy!” she said dreamily. “I loved every second of it!” 

Despite the hard work, the organizing, the baking and the worrying, I whole-heartedly agreed with her. 

I loved every second of it too. 

I held my head up high and walked into the kitchen and suggested to the first child I saw, “How about on your birthday we have a mystery party! We divide up into teams, collect clues to solve a theft or something! All your little friends could bring you a Nancy Drew or a Hardy Boys book?” 

My child looked up at me, took a long sip of lemonade and frowned. 

“Nah. Don’t want to. “ 

Oh well. Humility is a needed virtue too.