September may be chaotic, expensive and exhausting, but Pope Leo's 71st birthday reminds us the month has a few considerable advantages too.
September birthdays require a certain amount of determination. Most families have just returned from vacation to discover 437 unanswered emails, children are going back to school with feet that appear to have grown three sizes since June, and parents are standing in stationery aisles trying to establish the difference between several apparently identical blue folders.
In a nutshell, the annual budget has been blown on overpriced holiday souvenirs and ice creams, and everybody is desperately trying to get back into work mode. So spare a thought for anyone attempting to insert a birthday into the proceedings — including, as it happens, Pope Leo XIV.
As you'll no doubt know, the Pontiff was born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago 71 years ago today. And while we don't know whether little Robert ever felt slightly short-changed by having his birthday land amid the September chaos, there are actually some advantages to being born at this particular time of year. Admittedly, we are using the word “advantages” generously.
1At least everybody is back
This is the great September birthday triumph over anyone unfortunate enough to have been born in July or August. Your friends are actually there.
No birthday invitation disappears into a WhatsApp group only to be met with “We're in Greece!” “Still in Portugal!” and the particularly irritating “Oh nooooo, we get back the day after!” By September, everyone has returned, which means there is at least a fighting chance of gathering the people you love around a birthday cake.
But September also brings new people into our lives. Children are meeting new classmates, students are arriving at college, adults are starting jobs or finding themselves alongside new colleagues, and parents are tentatively making friends at the school gate. A birthday party provides the perfect excuse to move things along a little. You can invite the person you've only known for two weeks without having to manufacture a reason to suggest dinner, and suddenly the old friends and the new ones are all around the same table.
And who knows what might begin over a slice of birthday cake? A new friendship, a future best friend, perhaps even a romance. At the very least, by October you'll have somebody new to complain to about how exhausted September has made you.
2You get two New Years for the price of one
January may have secured the official title, but September has a pretty convincing claim to being the real beginning of the year. Children head back to school, students start new courses, offices fill up again, projects that have been gently simmering suddenly become urgent, and diaries begin acquiring appointments at an alarming rate.
And with all that activity comes the annual September belief that we, too, are about to become new and improved versions of ourselves. This will be the year we answer emails immediately, arrive everywhere five minutes early and make to-do lists that actually go down in length. Parents may even entertain the particularly ambitious hope that nobody will announce at 10:47 p.m. that they need cardboard, glue and a photograph of an endangered mammal for the following morning.
For a September baby, all this reinvention conveniently coincides with turning another year older. While everybody else is reorganizing desks, buying notebooks and promising to be more efficient, you can add another candle to the cake and relaunch yourself at the same time.
Whether Pope Leo wakes up tomorrow thinking, 71: new year, new me seems unlikely. But the option is there.
3Nobody is allowed to merge it with Christmas
December babies, we see you. You have spent your lives receiving suspiciously substantial presents accompanied by the words, “This is for your birthday and Christmas,” as though the accident of being born in December somehow entitled everybody else to an annual 50% reduction in gift-giving.
September babies suffer no such indignity. Your birthday stands proudly alone, safely removed from Christmas, Easter and the annual avalanche of family celebrations that seems to occur between Thanksgiving and New Year's.
Pope Leo has an additional advantage here: when you're the Pope, Christmas is presumably not an occasion anyone is likely to forget.
4 Your mother certainly remembered the pregnancy
There are some details of our arrival in the world that our mothers are unlikely ever to let us forget. A September birthday means spending the final stretch of pregnancy in August, which in Chicago — where Robert Prevost was born — can be decidedly ... warm.
His mother, Mildred, already had two sons when her youngest arrived on September 14. We can only suspect that after carrying her third baby through the height of summer, she didn't need anyone to circle Robert's birthday on the family calendar.
This may not technically be a blessing for the September baby. It is more of an annual opportunity to appreciate your mother. Preferably with cake -- as I remind my own son, who was born in the depths of a hideous heatwave, every single year without fail!
5The weather might actually behave itself
September occupies that lovely little sweet spot when summer hasn't necessarily packed its bags, but it has stopped trying to cook everybody alive.
In much of the Northern Hemisphere, there is still a reasonable chance of sunshine, evenings can be warm enough to sit outside, and you can plan a birthday party in the garden without feeling quite so reckless. Better still, your guests aren't spending the entire celebration either hunting for shade or quietly wondering how soon they can leave and stand in front of an air conditioner.
Of course, September weather cannot be entirely trusted. A beautifully arranged outdoor table remains one dark cloud away from being carried indoors at speed, complete with cake, candles and increasingly soggy napkins. But that's part of the charm. You might get one of those glorious late-summer days when the light is softer, the air is cooler and everybody knows they should appreciate it because there probably aren't too many left.
For a birthday, that's not bad timing at all.
6And sometimes your birthday really does come with a blessing
For Pope Leo, September 14 isn't simply his birthday. It is also the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, one of the Church's ancient feasts. And this particular coincidence clearly means something to him.
When Leo celebrated his 70th birthday last year, he spoke about sharing his birthday with the feast and connected it to the response that has accompanied his vocation from the beginning: “not my will, but yours, Lord.” Later that evening, there was still room for the more conventional elements of a birthday: a simple gathering, a cake, a toast and a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Which seems a pretty good way to approach a September birthday.
Yes, everyone is exhausted. Yes, school has started. Yes, the vacation bills have arrived, along with the uncomfortable evidence that somebody needs yet another pair of shoes.
But birthdays have never really depended on perfect timing. They are a chance to celebrate the simple fact that somebody we love is here — whether that person is turning seven, 71, or happens to be the 267th successor of St. Peter.
So happy birthday, Pope Leo! We hope you have a wonderful and blessed day -- and, naturally, we're very curious to know all about the cake.
