# Is a half-birthday party a silly idea? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 17, 2010, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438 "2010-10-17T13:12:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![sugar\_and\_spice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@sugar\_and\_spice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sugar_and_spice)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438/41 "2010-10-18T17:12:31Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I don’t understand the problem. Why does school have to be in session for the invites to go out and come back? There’s email and Facebook and all that shit. Presumably the sprog doesn’t need school to be in session to know who he wants to invite. > > It also seems to me that it shouldn’t be that hard to find a weekend during the summer when most of the sprog’s friends are in town. If he’d like to invite 10 friends but the best you can do is to find a weekend when only 8 of them can make it, it’s hardly a tragedy. Yeah this is kinda what I was thinking. I canceled a slumber party once (not a birthday party) because only 2 girls could come. I kinda wish my mom had said something like “Well let’s have those 2 girls over and have movies and pizza!” I was just being mopey and focusing on all the people who couldn’t come, and not thinking about having fun with the ones who could. And if you have only 3 or 4 kids then you can spend more per kid and go do something really cool, and he can pick from all the stuff that’s open during the summer but not during the school year. But that said I also think the charity donation instead of a gift is also a cool idea for the half-year party. IMHO the only touchy point is the gifts. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438/42 "2010-10-18T17:19:28Z")
I think it’s a great idea. If one of my kid’s friends did this I would not feel like I was being gouged for gifts; it’s no different than having the party a month earlier or later. ---
**Author:** ![gurujulp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba9def/32.png) [@gurujulp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gurujulp)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438/43 "2010-10-18T17:21:46Z")
As my daughter’s Birthday is A:in the summer, not the school year and B:she is usually away for the summer and I haven’t been present at one of her birthdays in four years As of last year we began giving her a smallish celebration (and school cupcakes) for her half-birthday in January. We don’t buy her a gift, but she receives cards, etc from her friends at school… ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438/44 "2010-10-18T17:42:28Z")
I think it’s a good idea - I only had to vote for option 4 because I have done this myself - I didn’t get a birthday party organised one year because I was busy doing other things, so had it later in the year instead. Worked well and I would do it again. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438/45 "2010-10-18T17:56:00Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > I think it’s a good idea - I only had to vote for option 4 because I have done this myself - I didn’t get a birthday party organised one year because I was busy doing other things, so had it later in the year instead. Worked well and I would do it again. In 2008, my birthday fell on the date of the federal election I was serving as a campaign manager in, so of course there was no birthday for me that year (I was also too dog-tired for a good month afterward to do anything remotely social). Coincidentally, however, my 10,000th day of life fell a few months later, so I held a party for that instead. ---
**Author:** ![Hedda\_Rosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hedda_rosa/32/1204_2.png) [@Hedda\_Rosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hedda_Rosa)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438/46 "2010-10-18T18:14:16Z")
I don’t think it is a gift grab but I do think it is unnecessary, unless you have your heart set on having a huge invite-every-kid-in-the-class party, with 35 kids running around being crazy, you can still get his 8 or 10 best friends, right? My daughter turned 8 in mid-August this year and we had a great birthday party for her. About 60% of those invited came and honestly I think that is similar to what you’d see any time of year, because families always have stuff going on. We can make maybe 2 out of every 3 birthday parties we get invited to during the school year…and then there was the time when we tried to make it to 3 in one day… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-half-birthday-party-a-silly-idea/557438.md?page=2)