JW alternatives to holidays

YellowLab

Even though you couldn't celebrate holidays growing up as a JW, did your parents ever have alternatives instead? In my case, we never celebrated Christmas, we had "Surprise Day" usually a week before. Instead of celebrating Thanksgiving, we would have a turkey dinner a few weeks later. Instead of celebrating Halloween, you had costume parties with your Dub friends. If you had a birthday, we wouldn't celebrate it with a cake, but we'd go out to eat the following weekend. It's almost as if they didn't want us to feel "cheated out" on those kinds of things.

I'm interested in hearing your experiences.

Edited by - YellowLab on 5 February 2003 11:51:56

cruzanheart

My parents always took me shopping the day AFTER Christmas, and Mom told me how silly it was that kids got presents on Christmas that cost FULL PRICE (definitely one of the 7 deadly sins), and that I would get more toys by shopping the sales. I did, too, so I never felt deprived of anything except the pretty lights and trees. I just admired those to myself.

Nina

NeonMadman

We used to have a "Present Day", generally within a few weeks of Christmas. My (now ex-)wife and daughter really loved it, but I thought it was grossly hypocritical that we claimed not to celebrate Christmas, yet did, in effect, celebrate it, just not on the exact day (lots of other JW's in our area did it, too). Eventually, we moved it to our wedding anniversary, which was in February, which I thought was a bit better.

It wasn't really that I had a moral objection to celebrating Christmas even then. I knew for a long time that the JW's didn't have the truth. It was just the hypocrisy of trying to get by on a technicality that bothered me. In retrospect, I think it would be better for JW's to actually celebrate Christmas in a Christ-honoring way than to try to skirt around it and still enjoy the secular aspects while completely disregarding what the holiday has come to mean to Christians.

DIAMOND

If you had parents like that then consider yourself lucky. I was out of the truth 12 years and the wife and I still didn't celebrate xmas or birthdays what idiots.

But now that I've remarried and am fading I'm doing all the things I should have done the first time. I give my daughter a party the month of her birthday. I'm going to give her a valentines gift on valentines day her and her JW mom (and dare them both to tell their JW grandma). And this past xmas I got her a bike and a cd player and my wife a ring.

The whole thing of not celebrating is dumb. Children need to be children. And they need more in there lives than just meetings and service.

KNOWLEDGE CHANGES EVERYTHING

Diamond

OUTLAW

As kids we were told worldly kids only get presents on their Birthday and Christmas.JW`s can get presents at any time of the year..So where`s all the friggin presents?!!..I never seen any of them,LOL!....Or how about dubs that go to their non-dub family homes at christmas.Then enjoy the festivities,while their not celebrating Christmas,what a joke,LOL!...OUTLAW

dottie

I'm suddenly reminded of the episode of "Seinfeld".....

"A festivus for the restuvus" LOL

My mom would always have over the single moms from the KH and have a turkey dinner on christmas day or boxing day for a little "get together" LOL whatever

Dottie

LFitzwater

Outlaw, it was the same at my house. We were told that our parents loved us enough to not have to wait for holidays. We could get presents anytime. IT NEVER HAPPENED. And my dad was never a witness. He just went along with whatever she wanted to "keep the peace". I remember once after my older brother was DFed he came over (I was only about 12) and he brought us gifts the day before Christmas. My mom was FURIOUS!, But my dad stepped in and said we could have them. Also, my grandparents on my dads side would get us each one small gift (they did not have a lot of money but had 10 grandkids just from my parents.) My dad made sure we got it and they would give it to us the day before Christmas too. On our b-days they gave us $3. Otherwise we did not get gifts. My mom used to comment on how it was a good thing we did not celebrate because we could not afford it. But we ALWAYS had to tell everyone that we did not mind not having the holidays.

YEAH RIGHT! IT SUCKED! All the other kids got to go to partys and be included at school. I felt SO isolated.

Laurie Fitzwater

caligirl

We had "Family Day" as an alternative to Christmas. Usually in late January, early February. The annual turkey festivities usually happened on Friday or Saturday of that same weekend, and once, I remember having it on Thanksgiving itself (Must have been why that earthquake happened in Hudson Bay that day!) . My parents are still very active, even though all their children "abandoned" the faith, but all of us now get what we call our un-christmas and un-birthday gifts every year from them. Their un-thanksgiving continues as it always has. It really is kind of funny.

Ravyn

We had Surprise Day too---only it was usually on December 25th becoz of the school holiday. And we had turkey on Thanksgiving because they were on sale. And I got gifts on my birthday because it was usually close to the last day of school and since I always got A's it was for a good report card. When we got older and Surprise Day ebcame to difficult to hide from other JWs we starting celebrating mom and dad's anniversary as a family and it got to the point where we made worldly christmases look like pathetic imitations--and it was on Nov 21st, so in time enough for some of the xmas sales to start. It still to this day pisses me off to think the last anniversary we celebrated I spent hundreds of dollars on them and my father was cheating on my mom and planning his escape(but he did not return any of the gifts!)

Ravyn

Wolfgirl

Ditto NeonMadman's comments.

JW alternatives to holidays

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