Is there a tougher time of the year to be born than Christmas-time? I know four people born within a couple of days of Christmas Day. My friends Philip and Rod on the 24th, my favourite old flatmate, Lisa on the day itself, and my cousin Ian on the 27th.

All of them say that by sharing their birthday with an important celebration like Christmas, that they a) used to get only one present from each person (“this is for your birthday AND Christmas”), b) that their friends were never around to spend the day with them, c) that their birthday party was scheduled earlier in December or moved to January and d) that it felt like an anti-climax.

Capricorns tend to feel a little negative about life, and those born in the first 10 days of Capricorn, get it worst than most! Think about it – they have Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day taking up precedence over their birthdays.

Perhaps not surprisingly – although it’s not especially fair – thanks to it falling at the finance-draining time of Christmas, people certainly don’t spend twice as much on their one combination gift. And I don’t even want to get into how parents explain Santa only brings one present when he HAS to know it’s their birthday, as well!

Ian’s mum (my aunt), gets around this by permanently celebrating his birthday on 17 December so he has at least had half a chance of people remembering and being able to attend his birthday parties.

I wondered what the other “challenging” days of the year might be to have a birthday.

My guess is it’s also difficult to have a birthday falling on 31 December (everyone’s too busy celebrating to remember), 1 January (too hungover to remember), 14 February (busy celebrating Valentines Day), the 2nd Sunday of any year (sharing it with Mothers Day), around the June long weekend (everyone’s away), 4 July (it  could be overlooked in the US), 31 October (your birthday isn’t the only scary thing going on) and especially in Melbourne, Australia on the first Tuesday in any year – they’re all too busy celebrating the Melbourne Cup.

On what other days are people all too likely to forget or downplay it’s your birthday because it coincides with something else?

Read the monthly stars for Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces.