What did they all do on "worldly holidays" when you were home alone? (page 2)

luna2

After spending one Thanksgiving at a sister's house (with quite a group of other single sisters) where she made turkey and stuffing, we all brought side dishes or desserts, and it was just as if we were celebrating the holiday anyhow, I lightened up and started going over to my relatives for dinner on the holidays. Only diff was that we'd leave before presents and I would be careful not to say Happy Thanksgiving/Easter/Christmas to anyone.

My parents started booking dinner at a favorite restaurant (my mother's not up for cooking and enjoys limiting the holiday social time to a couple of hours) for the first sitting...usually around 11:00a.m. on Thanksgiving...so that I could make my bookstudy in the afternoon. I think my parents enjoy the early meal and then going home to do whatever they want for the rest of the day so I'm sure we'll keep to that tradition even after I tell them that I'm no longer a JW. LOL

pisces

When I was a child we did absolutely nothing on the holidays. Halloween was the worst, because kids used to start trick or treating AFTER sundown in my neighborhood and my mom would turn off all the lights and close the curtains to give the illusion of not being home. Nothing beats sitting in the dark at home while all your classmates are out collecting candy. Pisces

misspeaches

If your single you really don't have a social standing in the borg. After all who knows - you might steal the sisters husbands...

Too bad if you have not stepped out of line your whole life, if your single and over 20 your automatically assigned the reputation of being a tramp.

Grrrr.... It still gives me the crappolas!!!!!

luna2

pisces, yes! I was always big into Halloween, making them costumes and innocently having a good time with it all....until I joined the borg. After we stopped, I used to take them out to dinner and a movie that night or go to a get-together with other single sisters and their kids. I do remember once staying home, ordering a pizza and sitting in the dark with candles, watching movies as we hid from the world and it's greedy, demon-inspired candy collecting...that was kind of fun. LOL

My eldest was about 8 when we stopped celebrating the evil and worldliness that is holidays. My youngest was 5 and very much his own person. After I sat them down and told them that this year would be our last for celebrating worldy, pagan-based, and nationalistic festivities (i.e...everything), his comment was, "It's not fair! He (his brother) got more time than me!! How about you and my brother don't celebrate, but I do?" Poor kid.

love11

For Halloween we went out to eat most years. It was really humiliating when everyone would ask us why we weren't out trick or treating. Then they would try and give us candy and we had to turn it down, you should have seen the looks on the waitresses faces. (like- what freaks!)

For Thanksgiving- I remember one year when we went to the hospital and had a turkey dinner. I never understood how it was ok to eat it at the hospital, but not at home or at our families house. Most years we would eat chicken on Thankgiving.

Christmas was really fun- we would all go to a state park that had a beautiful lodge and tobaggoning(spell-?) and all the local witnesses met there and had dinner together at the lodge restaurant and then we went swimming. We would stay there about 3-4 days. One year my friend and I almost fell through the ice in our pajamas, we wanted to see what it was like with no one around or no sounds being made by other people. It was cool until we heard a cracking sound and we both took off running. Plus, they had herds of deer there and we always saw babies and their mothers. I went back there recently and it just wasn't the same.

After every holiday, my mom would buy the clearanced candy. I could never understand why it was evil to buy the candy before the holiday.

Charisma

I remember I saw my father who was never a witness on father's day once. I didn't realize it even was father's day. But when I told a sister in the congregation, she gasped, that I had seen my worldy father on father's day. She told me to go turn msyelf in to the elders. I didn't though

curlygirl

Every Thanksgiving my JW got together for the traditional thanksgiving meal. That was perfectly acceptable because no one talked about pilgrims and indians! It never struck me as hypocritical until my hubby and I stopped attending meetings and voila! my family stopped coming over for the holidays!!

Curlygirl

Charisma

oh my. Now that is just plain silly!

Hecklerboy

I got phone calls many times. Every time someone was moving I got a call. Every time someone had computer problems I got a call. They always knew who I was when there was a gift or money to contribute, or some physical labor to be done. There was plenty of upbuilding association - upbuilding for everyone but me.

Aint that the truth. When I moved to a new town the only time I was invited over to the "brothers" homes was to fix their computer or help with something. That really pissed me off. I missed work and the meetings once for over 2 weeks when I came down with a serious respiratory infection. Not one of my so called "friends" called or came by to check on me. They just hounded me when I went back to the meeting to see why I had missed. Ironicly, my "worldly" workmates and landlady checked on me, made me dinner, and my landlady even let me pay my rent late since I hadn't worked in 2 weeks. That was one of the first things that opend my eyes. I finally started seeing who my true friends were.

Balsam

As a worldly person prior to being a JW I loved the main holidays. After becoming a JW. I would have big meals at my house and invite the friends. They always came, and at Christmas time we would go to the movies that day after a nice meal. We we enjoyed it as much as possible without doing anything Christmas. At holidays and parties at school, I would pick up my boys and we would go to McDonald's and go to the mall for a fun afternoon. I didn't want my kids feeling deprived or punished. At Halloween I bought my kids candy and that day was a day to induldge. Thankfully now we're all out we all enjoy the holidays as they were meant to be.

Balsam

What did they all do on "worldly holidays" when you were home alone?

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