April 6

Like Joseph, I loved to build blanket forts. I would often build them by sticking heavy books on top of sheets on top of stools and draping the sheets across the stools and the table. Then I would go in with my dolls and books and hang out until it got stuffy or boring.

One day, I built a fort. Before I got in, I asked my mom, "What day is Easter each year?" The answer was sort of complicated because it involved full moons and first day of spring and whatnot, so I didn't really get it. Then I asked, "Can my birthday ever be on Easter?"

"No. It just happens between March 20th and April 25th." (Or somewhere around there.) I was sad that my birthday missed it by just a few days, especially since Leslie got to have her birthday on Easter once.

"When is Jesus's birthday?" I asked.

"April 6th is what they say," she said.

I sighed and went into my fort. I didn't have Easter and I didn't have Jesus's birthday. While in my fort I said a little prayer that went basically like this: "Heavenly Father, Jesus was actually born on my birthday, right?" I felt good about it, so I spent the rest of the time in my fort happy about this little secret we had kept from the rest of the world.

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This morning, I woke up and thought, "It's Mormon Christmas!" I had long since given up on insisting that Christ was born on my birthday and had decided to agree with the apocryphal quotes and context clues that most of us subscribe to that suggest that Christ was born on April 6th.

Then I went downstairs and checked Facebook. The first thing I saw was from an old friend who had a link to some reputable article saying that Christ was likely born in December. I didn't read it because it first cost money and then when he fixed the link the pdf was sideways. And it was long.

I was mildly intrigued nonetheless so I ran to my copy of Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage. Hmm. He was less authoritative about it than I was expecting. I googled December temperatures in Israel and found them to be livable. Kevin googled when lambing season would occur in Israel, with only ambiguous results. The verdict? Well, it could have been December.

Although this is a small point of trivia that has no real bearing on pretty much anything, I felt a little sad. For one thing, all my plans for Mormon Christmas suddenly seemed pointless (okay, not that I had any, but I wouldn't have felt weird singing Christmas songs today). For another thing, I no longer had the small bit of satisfaction that came from sharing a birthmonth with the Savior. Was that going to be taken away from me too?

But Kevin had some words of comfort for me. "Well, if it wasn't April 6th, it might have been your birthday after all!"

At any rate, I think I will make it through today without hiding in a blanket fort.