Hi All
Thankyou for the comments. Its great to get so much input!
Carla said, "it sounds as if you are trying to decide between giving your child as normal of life as possible but hold back for financial reasons as well as trying not to piss daddy off" This is not a fair assessment. I have a close relationship with my parents. My Dad's cultural background means he is a man of few words, but we get on well enough now, and my Mum and I are in constant contact. I seriously don't want to upset them too much in their older age, but then again they have upset me with the whole bringing me up in a cult thing ... I mentioned the will thing as a sidepoint, and there is not that much money involved, more the sentimental/memories stuff and that being cut out would be hurtful. You asked "Are you willing to go to any lengths to protect your childs physical, emotional, mental and spiritual life? You may be the one to one day have to limit contact with the parents if they will not abide by your rules of not indoctrinating your child." Yes. I am not about to throw my child to the wolves if that is what the situation becomes, however they are getting older (70s) and don't seem to have a desperate "we must save them" thing going on, but don't worry, I'm staying alert, and like I said, there will be a lot less unsupervised care from next year.
About Christmas and Atheism, I didn't mean that to be an issue but it's interesting to hear all your comments. In my town, in my age group, so-called "Christians" who may belong to a church use it for funerals/marriages/christenings and that's about it, some don't even do that. There is no Jesus in Christmas for most of these people anyway, so it is mainly a secular holiday for these families as well. I think the end of the year is a great time to celebrate and give gifts.
Undercover said:
"The holidays present a challenge for the faded person who still has family still faithful to the bOrg. You may like celebrating and maybe you want to decorate even, but to keep the peace in the family - or to keep the hounds at bay - you have to curtail these activities to some degree.
You have to weigh how much you want to keep the family peace against how much you want to express your freedom to do what you want. There is no one answer that works for everyone.
I am thinking maybe I should just leave off the Chrismas tree itself, as that will probably be the greatest issue, for the time being and just do the lights/presents/food/etc. Lights are a big thing over here, but it is harder to pin them as Christmas. I don't want to have to moderate what I do, but at the same time I think it's great that my son has such lovely Grandparents, I never had that (well I had Grandparents but not like my Mum and Dad). I think happy, carefree association with them, without the tension of mum and dad being shunned, is probably more important to him than a Christmas tree. I think maybe it is more my desire to be "normal" than his, that is driving the tree thing (and the fact I think Chrismas trees are pretty). I may be able to put up tinsel, especially since my mum brought a bag of old tinsel over that I used to have (I loved tinsel and she used to buy it for me after Christmas) a couple of months ago with the comment that I might use it for parties and Jack might like it.
There will be no Santa in our house, I just don't feel comfortable with the idea and worry it paves the way for irrational belief, considering our particular situation of our child being in contact with JWs. Plus if we buy our child a nice present I want them to know it comes from me and his dad!
Thanks for all your comments again. They really do help. I apologise for the disjointed nature of my writing but I am pressed for time and sleep deprived...
