Birthday Party Backlash!

My daughter is turning eight soon and wants a birthday party-no surprises here except in the midst of a recession said birthday party is considered a non-essential expenditure. But… I live in the happy, shiny suburbs where birthday parties bring a unique brand of peer pressure to create an event worthy of the local social pages.

I checked out the clothing store Justice (for hip tweens) where at $25 per head, my daughter and her friends can dress up like a faux rock star with colored hair streaks and braids, makeup, a fake plastic headset and to finish off the look-a funky hand sock. (I didn’t know rock stars wore hand socks, but I digress..) A quick calculation brings the grand total to $400 for a Justice birthday party, which doesn’t do my bank account “justice” so I quickly moved on to the next option: a Spa Party –where for the same price she and her friends can get a mani-pedi then head to a nearby pizza parlor for pizza and cake. Total price: $550.00. Did I mention that none of these preliminary calculations involve the extra expenditure of the goody bag? The whole goody bag thing, in my opinion, is a nonsensical social perversion –You give the birthday girl a gift and the birthday girl, in turn, gives you a gift.

Since the goody bag typically rivals the cost of the actual birthday gift, can’t we just call it even with the whole gift-giving-goody-bag-receiving thing? No one gives or gets. (That would save me an extra $100 bucks) and it would save you roughly $15 dollars per invite.

Now, planning an eight-year-old birthday party is tricky. My daughter says that she is too “old” for indoor bounce houses and play gyms so that rules out Pump It Up and My Gym. She thinks that Libby Liu in the mall is too babyish and the whole stuff-a-bear-and-dress-it routine seems stale and silly. I’m definitely not up for pulling an all-nighter as the host of a slumber party so that leaves me with few options. I tried to explain to my daughter that birthday parties are soooo yesterday in light of the recession, and that the “new” birthday party is a “BirthStay Party” , a home party, kind of like those “StayCations” dubbed by the media where people “vacation” in their own backyards.

A “BirthStay” Party could be sooo retro-like when I was growing up and mom invited the neighborhood kids over to my house to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and musical chairs then eat homemade birthday cake and ice cream from a cup with a wooden spoon, all the while wearing one of those brightly colored cone birthday hats. Decorations consisted of crepe paper streamers and perhaps a Happy Birthday sign and a few balloons (not the helium kind but the home blown kind). After the opening of the birthday gifts, my friends and I were free to play in the backyard, where there wasn’t a rented bounce house but rather a metal swing for fun, until their parents returned to pick them up. My departing gift for each invitee was a big thank you hug instead a goody bag and that was completely socially acceptable. I don’t think my mom was even required to write thank you notes back then (a source of post birthday party angst).

Fastforward back to present day and I ask what the heck has happened to all of us? Have we lost our ever-lasting minds? When did it become okay and even socially expected to plop down $500 bucks or more on a child’s birthday? What happened to the good old-fashion home birthday party? I think the time has come for its return-we’ll just give it a new name “BirthStay Party” so this generation thinks it’s some new hip way to celebrate. I call for a birthday party backlash- Let’s ban goody bags and $25-a-head parties and put the money towards something like… oh I don’t know…college savings, our depleting 401Ks, or towards the credit card debt that’s carrying many of us from paycheck to paycheck until this economy turns around. So, if you don’t get an invitation to Alexis’ birthday party this year-don’t be offended. Just know that I decided to buck the system-my own birthday party backlash- but know that I love you all. I just can’t afford to show it with goody bags and faux rock star parties this year.