Dear N.,

We celebrated your birthday this past weekend.  Finally.

I know you had a great time.  I haven’t seen you laugh and smile around other kids like that… well, ever.  You got the Tinkerbell cake you wanted, despite all of my efforts to convince you that the Princess cake was so much prettier.  It was a good birthday party.  Maybe even great.

There’s a lot of debate in our faith about whether or not we should celebrate birthdays.  Your dad and I are pretty liberal about this and have always celebrated them.  This year, though, as we discussed the celebration, we consciously took apart why a birthday is celebrated and what the purpose of such a celebration is.

We discussed it in the frame of reference of our values and the values we would like to pass on to you.

First, I want to remind you that you that we’ve been blessed with the means to provide for you, and moreover we were raised and have appropriated the idea that everything we have is for our children.  As a result, we rarely deny you anything.  Lucky for us, you’re easy to please in terms of material stuff.  So.far.

You will never want for anything as long as we can help it.

But back to the birthday and what we think it means.

A birthday is a special day that marks the anniversary of your coming into the world.

The celebration of a birthday, in many ways, signifies your importance to the people that love you.  It is a day of joy, of laughter and friendship.  It’s a day where your friends and family honor you and show their gratitude for your presence in their life.  It is also a day, that we believe, you should show gratitude for the life that you have.

Honey, we just couldn’t figure out how getting presents figured into all of that.  Now, don’t take this as an indictment against anyone who can figure out how the presents factor in to it all… I’m just saying that your dad and I couldn’t figure out how getting presents that you will not even play with next year underscored these values of gratitude or true joy.

Personally, I was in a state of shock when you quickly agreed to having people donate money to charity instead of getting presents for you.

You are the most compassionate and amazing child I have ever met.   Actually, the most compassionate person I have ever met.  You seemed more upset by the fact that there were children without shelter, clean water and clothing than the idea of not getting presents.

So, with your permission, we asked your friends to give donations in your name to UNICEF instead of giving you presents.

And, you know what?

Because of your birthday, we were able to raise $365.

You’re five, so you don’t know what that means.

It means a temporary school for 40 children living in a disaster area and over 400 vaccines against tetanus.

It means that because of you and the people who came to your birthday, over 400 other children’s lives will be better.

It means that your friends honored you by being generous.

It means that you showed gratitude by thinking of others.

It means that 400 children’s lives will not have to end senselessly.

That, my dear daughter, is how we want to celebrate you and how we want you to be celebrated.  It is how we show our gratitude to our Maker for blessing us with the treasure that is you.

I hope you get it.

I think you do.