Join us tonight, Saturday Dec. 18,2010 at 7p.m.EST for our annual Christmas program on the Six Screens of the Watchtower conference call. Many former , as well as active Jehovah's Witnesses call in from all over the world and you will be thrilled to hear what they say concerning Christmas and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Do many Jehovah's Witnesses secretly celebrate Christmas? And, how about former Jehovah's Witnesses, how do they feel about celebrating Christmas? The call is open to all and is interactive. It's easy to get on the call, just dial (712)432-8710 and when asked for pin use 9925. The lines open up at 6:30p.m.EST, so come in early and meet some new friends and talk with all of those who have been "touched by the tentacles of the Watchtower".
Do many Jehovah's Witnesses secretly celebrate Christmas?
by koolaid-man 8 Replies latest jw friends
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koolaid-man
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blondie
I depends on how you define "celebrating" Xmas>
1) I can remember the elders having their annual meeting with the pioneers on Xmas. Their wives and the spouses of the pioneers would be invited as well and there would be a traditional Xmas dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry, pumpkin pie,etc.
2) jws that would all go skiing surrounded by traditional Xmas decorations and traditional food.
3) the jws that would go to the Nutcracker or the Christmas Carol, or watch them on tv.
4) the jws that count out 6 months and wrap and exchange gifts then with a special meal with family.
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OUTLAW
All the JW`s I know..
Have a "It`s Not a Christmas Turkey Dinner",turkey dinner..
During the Christmas Holidays..
"Those poor Wordly People can only have Turkey Dinner on Special Occasions"..
"Jehovah`s Witness`s can eat Turkey Dinner all year long!"..
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...OUTLAW -
minimus
You know Witnesses don't celebrate XMas!
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Band on the Run
OMG! OMG! My father would not spring money for a play ball for my brother and I anytime of year. We had no toys. It was good I had my bro b/c we used our imagination to play. This has nothing to do with JW. My brother was around three and came home eager for a visit from Santa. My father punished us. He hung up one of his work sock on a door knob to prove no Santa existed. Any idiot can tell you Santa needs proper Christmas stockings hung with love, cookies and a fireplace. We always heard that our Catholic friends had toys only at Christmas while we lucky (I know, I know) JWs had toys all year round. Even at three, four we knew this was a total crock.
Every year the same remark. The children in our family have too many toys and are spoiled as a counterreaction.
My father was a very serious abuser who belonged in prison. It was an epiphany for me to read the Adult Children of Alcoholics Laundry List traits because I felt so damaged and alone. It is not trivial to read that someone else heard the same b.s. Thank you. Thank you.
My mom let us celebrate at school. Oh, my soul ached to celebrate Christmas. Altho we were witnesses, we did the NY Christmas tour, visiting the windows on Fifth Avenue and the tree at Rockefeller Center. We were not allowed to skate, though. Too cheap. When I took myself skating under the tree, it was bliss. I did it! Today, I usually attend a professional Messiah, a church Messiah, the tree at Rockefeller Center, the tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Christmas windows on Fifth and Madison, do a walking tour of Greenwich Village and Central Park, and attend midnight mass at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. I cry with joy.
We first celebrated Christmas openly after my father died. I had no clue how to decorate a tree. Alleulia! Once the Witness influence fell, we were a great family with respect for each other. I was not damaged goods. Honestly, if I were Jewish, I'd probably still feel alienation from mainstream American society. I'd have Judiasm though. God help me forgive the Witnesses.
I lag with digital camera skills or I would post a photo of my personal Christmas tree. It is spectacular. I invested much money and time. The decorations are eclectic, from imported European ones to handmade ones. It is not a Christmas tree it is my statement of liberation and joy. Now that I have a say I can celebrate Christmas fully. Sheer joy and wonder. Christmas hymns speak of my liberation. It is almost orgasmic. I suppose one can tell it has been decades since the Witnesses. Joyeux Noel. O Holy Night.
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Think About It
The decorations are eclectic, from imported European ones to handmade ones. It is not a Christmas tree it is my statement of liberation and joy.
That is cool. Isn't it great that with the long WTS influence in your family history that you can say in your own personal family you have put an end to it.
Think About It
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Broken Promises
Poignant but beautiful story, Band on the Run.
And welcome to the board!
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WTWizard
When I was a witless, I was taught to have zero tolerance for Christmas. That was to fully separate me from the world, and it did a pretty good job of making a dork out of me. (As if Jehovah himself didn't already do a fine job of that.) I was programmed to view the Christmas lights and decorations as evil, and not to even look at them to the extent possible. The Christmas songs were something to dread--at work in those days, it was the only time they actually played halfway decent Muzak.
As for the lies about getting toys all year, I have seen a few examples of that's being a total and complete lie. I remember going to a Grand Boasting Session in the mid 1990s, and the children in one family had next to no toys. (And, for the record, this family was not some Welfare bum with 18 children.) They shared a toy binoculars from a Happy Meal, and seemed to be enthralled with it. I had a toy calculator (one with a membrane you pull out to enter the keys), and they had fun with it (even though it was poorly made, and got ruined because the membrane was too flimsy). I got them some more substantial calculators (still mini-size, but more sturdy). This incident tells me that those children had very few toys.
Another case was the lead hounder's place. I saw the inside of that place once, and it was full of fine bookcases to showcase their theocraptic littera-trash. However, I couldn't find so much as a single radio or TV, and I could count the number of toys the two children had on the fingers of my left foot. Not even one! I could understand no video games (it was the late 1980s), but they had no radios, no TVs, no dolls, no toy cars, no nothing. To me, this is proof that "We get toys all year" is a complete lie. If they had to do Christmas, at least there would have been a few toys for those children. Which is better than none.
The scumbag that dragged me into the cancer was little better with his two children. And his brother's family had relatively little--they had a Nintendo system with perhaps 6 games, a few puzzles, some toy pens, and a toy stove. The scumbag himself had less for his own kids--I saw nothing. This was about typical--you get one family with a few toys, and that is it for the whole group.
Still another had relatively few toys. This one had money problems (the father got hurt on the job), and that put a limit on what they could get. As they were more liberal than what I was dragged in by, they did have a few dolls, a Nintendo system with a few games, and a few board games I could see. One day, I went there--with a couple of bags of presents wrapped in plain paper (in the early part of October), so I could make good on "We can get things any time we want". Needless to say, that family appreciated the items.
I have found that there are a few that do get a few toys all the time. The more liberal families do tend to get at least a little. However, I have seen all too many hard core witlesses that get next to nothing for toys. In fact, the more they cut back on their means of life so they can pio-sneer, the more they are going to snake-give toys. The family that had most of the toys for the whole clan actually cut back on their means of living during the 1990s (this was earlier in the 1990s that they had relatively plentiful toys), and probably has little or nothing in the way of playthings now. And, their attitude is that they should be focused on field circus anyways.
Which is just as cruel. Telling children that their time is for field circus instead of playing is evil. Children learn by playing, and if you take away the play time, they don't learn. And no, they don't need 800 video games, half a billion talking books, 10,000 dolls that do every conceivable thing, a billion race tracks and model cars, a house full of board games and balls, and enough building blocks of varying types to build a full-scale space shuttle. But, I find it shameful when a Happy Meals toy is all the children have to play with, or that I can find zero toys in a house where there are children between 6 and 12.
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clearpoison
As long as I remember we had Christmas Food, surprisingly in Christmas time, in very traditional way. All the family, including the DF/DA'd branches were invited to join the meal and enjoy family time together. No tree and decorations (except much candles), no presents (except what we got from DA/DF families), no singing (which I'm grateful for). I can't really label it as Christmas celebration, but it was not far from it anyway.
CP
