Birthdays are special. The arrival of a new year is special. But when your birthday is on Jan. 1, it isn’t necessarily a doubly special day.
In fact, being a New Year’s Baby can be a bit of a party pooper.
“Your parents were always hung over on your birthday so if you wanted a party you had to cozy up to New Year’s Eve and celebrate,” says Vancouver actor Allan Morgan, who was born at 11:50 p.m. on Jan. 1, 1955 at the Guelph General Hospital in Ontario.
In those early years, his parents would leave his birthday presents at the end of his bed in the hopes that he would play quietly in his room while they slept in. Later, it was his friends who were too hung over from the previous night’s festivities to rouse themselves to wish him a spirited “Happy Birthday!”
Finally, Morgan decided to take his birthday celebrations into his own hands. In the 1980s, he organized an annual birthday party at the Someplace Else restaurant, a popular after-theatre spot near the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
“I’d have the greatest dinner party there,” he says. “It was tremendous.”
Fellow actor Marcus Hondro was never much of a fan of being the New Year’s Baby, either.
He remembers as a young child coming into his parents’ bedroom on Jan. 1, excitedly reminding them that it was his birthday.
They did not share his early morning enthusiasm.
“Let us sleep a little longer,” they’d tell him.
“Yeah, but it’s my birthday,” he’d try to argue.
They’d turn over and fall back asleep.
There’s also the issue of presents. “I remember someone giving me a present at Christmas and being told, ‘That’s for your birthday, too,’” Hondro says. “I got most of my gifts a week earlier.”
But at least Hondro had the honour of being the year’s first baby in Victoria and being plied with gifts. Morgan was born so close to the end of the day that someone else beat him to the glory.
Please not a New Year’s Baby
Linnea Teichroeb’s parents always made an extra effort to ensure that birthdays were special for their New Year’s Baby.
Linnea was born at 12:32 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1998 in Vancouver (where she was the province’s first baby to be born with the help of a midwife under the newly licensed program). Once she was old enough to stay up until midnight, the family had a New Year’s party, counting down to when they could shout “Happy New Year!” Thirty-two minutes later, the candles were lit on a cake and they’d all sing “Happy Birthday.” They’d save opening the gifts until dinner that night.
Linnea’s mom, Benedicte Schioetz, tried everything she could to avoid a Jan. 1 birthday for her daughter. Schioetz had married young and put her education on hold to raise her two oldest daughters. She wanted three children but she also wanted to go back to school.
In March 1997, she realized that if she got pregnant right away, child number three could be born in that calendar year. Since kindergarten enrolment was also based on the calendar year, if her baby was born before Dec. 31, Schioetz would only have a two-year gap between the second and third child starting school. If the baby was born after Dec. 31, she’d have to put off her own return to school by a year.
It was now or never. She went for it — and missed by 32 minutes.
In hindsight, being born on Jan. 1 was a blessing for Linnea, Schioetz says. At home, Linnea was fated to always be the youngest. Among her school friends, however, she always got to enjoy being the first — first to be able to get her driver’s licence, first to turn 18… It also helped that by being oldest in her class, Linnea was able to develop leadership skills that have served her well.
Today, Linnea is doing her gap year in Norway, where her mother was born. She’s “done stellarly well in her schooling” and hopes to be accepted into Norway’s medical program to become a doctor.
Schioetz will be joining her daughter in Norway Dec. 31, but it’s up to Linnea to decide how to ring in the new year and her 20th birthday. “If she’s partying with friends on New Year’s Eve, we’ll do her presents on New Year’s Day,” Schioetz says.
New Year’s Eve babies
As much as there are drawbacks to being the New Year’s Baby, try being the New Year’s Eve baby.
“Everyone says, ‘You’re lucky because everyone is celebrating your birthday.’ Not really. They’re celebrating something else,” says Gerri Torres, who became accustomed to people being away on holidays or having other plans on her birthday.
She was born on Dec. 31, 1963 in the Philippines. Her parents had really wanted her to be crowned “Little Miss Sunshine” as the first baby of 1964. Along with all of the attention, the family would have been showered with gifts, which ranged from cars to fridges and appliances.
“No, no, hold it,” her mother was told when the labour pains became too hard to ignore seven hours before midnight. But baby Gerri’s arrival could not be delayed and all those gifts went to another family.
Fun fact: On average, 7,200 babies a year are born at B.C. Women’s Hospital. It hasn’t had the province’s first New Year’s Baby for at least a decade, but last year it celebrated the birth of British Columbia’s first 2017 New Year’s Baby at “midnight on the dot.” You literally can’t beat that timing.
