Happy Birthday Baby Jesus! We made you a vampire cake!

Our wonderful friends Trier and Andrew invited us over for a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Eve. Her mom and twin sisters joined us. Trier is a first child/oldest daughter kind of person (like me), so she had everything planned out perfectly (also like me, *naturally*), but she has this wonderful relaxed, welcoming personality that just goes with the flow (um. Not like me. Frowny. Face.). So does Andrew, really. Even with a house full of frosting-toting kids, they were either genuinely amiable and pleasant or they can both do masterful impressions of rainbows.

Trier and Andrew are expecting their second child, and even with that, and house guests at Christmas, and an active preschooler, they still had everything together. My only job was to bring the "Happy Birthday" banner and some birthday hats. I simply couldn't pull that off though. So, Steve was given those items on a list and sent to Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve morning to pick them up (grounds for divorce in some states). He came back with a banner, but no hats, because he couldn't bring himself to buy Hello Kitty themed hats to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior. So, Trier magically made non-cartoon themed hats appear as well.

Their table was set with two perfectly rounded cakes already baked and accompanied by icing and sprinkles fanned out beautifully--one for each family to decorate for Jesus. Levi is their son, and he and his mommy and daddy decorated their cake with a carefully formed tribute to the Christ-child.

Our cake was decorated as more of a tribute to the stable part of the Christmas story. Remember? It's the part of the Christmas story where the stable floor gets cleaned with a shovel.

During events like this, our family lets Anna take the lead. You know, because she's five and totally into stuff like this and will take home lasting memories from it all, and blah, blah, blah. But also because it's hilarious to watch her go. We should probably have warned Trier and Andrew, though.

Anna began the party by putting on a princess dress. We had already accepted that this was non-negotiable. She allowed me to help with the all-over, first coat of frosting.

Steve graciously played goalie, keeping Maria involved, but not too involved. He also kept his head on straight enough to stop mommy from letting our 18-month-old child stuff handfuls of icing into her mouth for the sake of some cute photos. He was right, of course. I only hope my momentary lapse in judgment didn't mean that Trier and Andrew found frosting drool on their furniture later or a sparkly pile of vomit near the tree.

Anna even let me help with the real decorating--at first. We both ran colorful edging around the cake, with lots of loopy fun. Then she got her mitts on the sprinkles. She dumped sprinkles, double-fisted, like Zeus pummeling the mortals with lightning bolts. She squeezed out more icing and sprinkles on more icing and sprinkles until our birthday cake for Jesus looked like an inside-out autopsy. Some of the sprinkles were from Halloween and were actual "Vampire sprinkles," too, which (with my junior high sense of humor) I could *not* laugh hard enough over.

But once the sprinkle dust cleared, we lit the candles and sang. I was a teensy bit surprised to find that I really liked having a party for Jesus. I can easily imagine that depending on who attended such a party, it could result in a get-together of such cheese and fakery, not even Jesus would want to blow out his candles. But, it wasn't like that with genuine people. Trier and Andrew are honest, real, refreshingly humble people. Singing "Happy Birthday to Jesus" means something important when you're singing with people who remind you of Him.

When we got to work on Monday, we discovered a colleague whose birthday was December 25th, and I was going to tease him about whether his parents always compared him to Jesus, saying something like: "I'll bet Jesus never complained about having to share HIS birthday with Christmas." And then I was all, "Huh. Not as funny as I first thought."

And that was sort of why we wanted to have a Birthday Party for Jesus in the first place. Not only does Jesus share his Birthday with Christmas. He's often not even invited to the festivities. I also wondered if having a Birthday Party was just too much, you know, schedule-wise. But, with good friends like Trier and Andrew, it didn't feel like we were squeezing another dutiful event in before the REAL Christmas stuff happened. It was a tiny moment of the real stuff of Christmas, stable droppings and all.

Hope you had a few moments of Real Christmas, too!