Yeah, really!! Not to change the subject, but back to the brothers and elders partying, it's ok to drink yourself stupid, but don't smoke a cigarette which doesn't effect you when you drive or anything else for that matter!
Birthdays banned in 1951?
by M.J. 44 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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M.J.
Mother's day reference in 1940 ( alert):
Watchtower, May 15, 1940, pp. 158-159:
MOTHER RELIGION IN MAY
You'd think you'd find such an article on birthdays sometime during the decade of the 1940s, but none exist in the Watchtower of that timespan.
"MOTHER’S DAY" began to be observed in England, in 1913. That same year the United States Congress, by resolution, made the second Sunday in May of each year a national holiday, "dedicated to the memory of the best mother in the world, your mother." That sounds nice, and on the face of it looks nice; but is it sincere? and what is the real purpose thereof? Do the men of England and America love their mothers better since that than they did before? Certainly not. Is it true that every man’s mother is the "best mother in the world"? Everyone knows that is not true. "Mother’s Day" was first observed in America in 1914, the very year that the "times of the Gentiles" expired and Satan’s uninterrupted worldly rule ended, at which event he knew his time was short to get ready for the great battle of Armageddon between his organization and The Theeeratic Government. To induce the people to bestow special honor and worship upon mothers would be one step toward turning the people away from the worship of the great Theocrat, Jehovah God; just another one of Satan’s means of preparing for Armageddon. In all the religious organzations today much is made over "Mother’s Day", but in not a single one of them are the people told that in respect of the commandment to honor father and mother. God is the Father of those that live and His "woman", to wit, his organization, is the mother of those that receive life from God, and that all honor and worship are due to Jehovah God. On the contrary, the men of "Christendom" are taught to pay their honor to creatures, and not to the Creator, and this is taught by clergymen, whose duty and obligation is to teach the people the truth of God’s Word...The month of May and of Mother’s Day is understood to be named after Maia, a demon worshiped by the pagans. "Her name marks her as the ’fruitful mother’ .... Maia became by Zeus the mother of the god Hermes."--The Encyclopaedia Britannica. On the face of it the arrangement of Mother’s Day seems harmless and calculated to do good. But the people are in ignorance of Satan’s subtle hand in the matter, and that he is back of the movement, to turn the people away from Jehovah God. The slogan is: "The best mother who ever lived", the purpose being to establish creature worship, or at least to divert the attention of man from the proper worship of God. There have been many good mothers of men, and many bad ones. Not every man has the best mother that ever lived ; and therefore the slogan is false...Women are seducing and misleading men, causing them to mix politics and religion and to compromise their duty toward God in order to comply with the rules of Satan’s unrighteous world. Such conduct is "fornication" in the Scriptural meaning of that term, as set forth at Revelation 2:20: "Thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols." Such is contrary to God’s rule, as stated at 1 Timothy 2: 12 "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."
When men and women follow the Devil's subtle sceme, they turn away from Jehovah God; and the farther they go, the more trouble they get Into. -
yesidid
MJ You are absolutely correct about the 1951 date.
I remember it clearly.
My father was baptized in 1914 and. Our household went very much by the Watchtower book. Birthdays were celebrated in our home till that year. I remember I was going through a personal trauma (I know what year that was),and the Watchtower came out just before my birthday. Whem my mother told me we would not be celebrating my birthday I was heartbroken.
Anyway she relented to the extent of getting me some clothing which I needed anyway.
But no party. It is still a very clear memory.
Birthdays were celebrated before 1951. It was the Watchtower you quoted that made them a sin.
yesidid
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TD
Well I've apparently lost my $%!!^@ mind.
I could have sworn that I read a rant against birthdays in a late 20's Golden Age.
Either.........
a. I've lost it
b. I can't find it.
c. It was never there.
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jwfacts
Here is the 75 Yearbook quote. Notice how it makes it sound like they happened virtually the same time. It says Christmas in 1928, ... Next was Christmas.
It should say, 'next, several million birthday celebrations later...'
Yearbook 1975 p.147
“What caused the Bible Students to stop celebrating Christmas? Richard H. Barber gave this answer: “I was asked to give an hour talk over a [radio] hookup on the subject of Christmas. It was given December 12, 1928, and published in The Golden Age #241 and again a year later in #268. That talk pointed out the pagan origin of Christmas. After that, the brothers at Bethel never celebrated Christmas again.”
“Did we mind putting those pagan things away?” asks Charles John Brandlein. “Absolutely not. This was just complying with new things learned, and we had never known before they were pagan. It was just like taking a soiled garment off and throwing it away.” Next, birthday celebrations and Mother’s Day were discarded—more creature worship. Sister Lilian Kammerud recalls: “How readily the brothers all dropped these holidays and admitted they were glad to be free. New truths always make us happy and . . . we felt we were privileged to know things that others were ignorant about.”” -
Poztate
I remember going to a bithday party in 1955 ?? My dad was an (elder) what ever they called it then and yet it didn't seem to be a big problem. Was he just "weak" or was it not a big deal back then the same way they make it now?
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Rabbit
MJ's Watchtower 1940 Quote:
Not every man has the best mother that ever lived ; and therefore the slogan is false...Women are seducing and misleading men, causing them to mix politics and religion and to compromise their duty toward God in order to comply with the rules of Satan’s unrighteous world.
Well, a p p a r e n t l y . . . my whole conception of women was wrong, then. The WT sets me straight again.
Evil women...I'm wise to you now...
* G E E E Z U S CHRIST ON A POGO STICK ... MAKE' EM STOP *
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chasson
The quote of the 1940's Watchtower is simply an extract of the first Book of the "Vindication" Series (1931) Bye Charles
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M.J.
...when they realized that birthday celebrations were giving undue honor to creatures (one reason that early Christians never celebrated birthdays), the Bible Students quit this practice too
So can we call this myth BUSTED?
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Super_Becka
So can we call this myth BUSTED?
So what's the verdict?? Were birthdays banned in the 1920s/30s or in the 1950s?? I'm a little lost here, everyone seems to be saying something different!!
-Becka :)