When your birthday falls smack dab in the middle of lent, every year

[Bookcat]

You handle it as a birthday!

Now of course if it falls on a Friday …one would not serve meat. Or on Ash Weds/Good Friday - one can move it so one can eat…

(or if one is an Eastern Catholic …of course one would follow their discipline as well)

 

[babochka]

On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

You can eat or drink as you please. The Church as no expectations or requirements.

While the Church (for the Latin Rite) only specifically requires fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the entire season of Lent is penitential and the Church calls for an increase in the penitential practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving beyond the required minimum, without dictating how that will be lived out in individual lives. I think it was with this in mind that the OP asked this question. She wanted to know how different individuals and families deal with celebrations in the middle of a season that is penitential in nature. Seems like a perfectly legitimate question to me.

 

[ora_pro_nobis]

My birthday is nearly always during Lent, but I will have cake etc unless it is a Good Friday, then I will wait until the Easter Sunday before letting loose!

 

[pensmama87]

We treat family celebrations including birthdays and baptism days as “family solemnities,” kind of the way a parish’s patron’s feast day is a local solemnity. We relax but don’t eliminate our Lenten practices on those days, the same as we do for Sundays or other solemnities.

 

[1ke]

While the Church (for the Latin Rite) only specifically requires fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the entire season of Lent is penitential and the Church calls for an increase in the penitential practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving beyond the required minimum, without dictating how that will be lived out in individual lives. I think it was with this in mind that the OP asked this question. She wanted to know how different individuals and families deal with celebrations in the middle of a season that is penitential in nature. Seems like a perfectly legitimate question to me.

My husband’s immediate family has 7 birthdays that fall during Lent. They celebrate them.

 

[His_helpmeet]

Many years ago, I looked through a book called The Year and Our Children by Mary Reed Newland. Her family made sacrifices during Advent, too, as a gift for the Christ Child. This is what she said and it might be something worth considering (quoted as best I can recall; some paraphrasing):

“Our children give Him their desserts and treats each day except on Sundays, feast days, and the two birthdays we celebrate with special festivities. On these days they try to give more willingly than before their bumps and hurts, and (this really hurts) their will in such matters as being first, sitting in the front, licking the bowl, etc.”