Fourth of July

mama1119

I was just wondering.......I know JW are not allowed to celebrate the Fourth, in fact it can we a JC issue, but where we live there is a HUGE celebration downtown and every year I see 90% of the witnesses I know down there, "not celebrating". They are doing the same thing all the other "wordly" people are doing to celebrate the Fourth...and alot of times JW will buy fireworks and let them off the day before, as if thats different.....how do they justify this??? Does anyone else have anything around them that JW will participate in but not call celebrating?????

parakeet

Accepting gifts just before or after Christmas so as not to participate in the celebration itself.
Attending Memorial Day parades, but not waving little flags, so not really celebrating.
Eating turkey the day before or after Thanksgiving, because, after all, the turkeys are on sale then.

XJW4EVR

It's the same difference that my mother & father claimed when we would have a get together on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. During which we would stuff ourselves with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, apple pie, etc.

If it's not on the day, then it's not a "worldly" celebration.

Warlock

There were a couple of people in our cong. that would have the turkey, with all the trimmings, ON Thanksgiving Day. Some would even go to restaurants serving turkey dinner on that day.

An elder told me that there was nothing wrong with having turkey on that day, as long as you were not celebrating the holiday. He was our p.o. at the time and he was neither young, nor new.

Warlock

ballistic

Yes, I agree. We don't have Thanksgiving or 4th of July here in England, but in many aspects of JW life can be seen this kind of conscience avoidance strategy, and displacement of celebrations rationalising what otherwise would be "worldy" behaviour, and I would go so far as to say it was endemic in varying degrees.

kwr

I have never figured out why Thanksgiving is not allowed by the WTS, it is not a pagan holiday. I don't think I can join because I do IT work for politicos and other churches. I'm not going to give up my career for a religion. Now if I was a soldier I would give that up, but work is work.

misanthropic

My brother is a Minesterial servant and he and his family will make the entire Thanksgiving Dinner the day before or the day after so as to not be actually be celebrating. Once when I was staying with them we were bored on Thanksgiving since there was nothing to do so we actually just made the whole shebang. But of course they all had to say several things about how we weren't acelebrating "Thanksgiving".

Purza

I have never figured out why Thanksgiving is not allowed by the WTS, it is not a pagan holiday.

I think because it was a "national" holiday and JWs remain neutral. Whatever. We always had turkey and friends over on that day and my dad was the PO. It all depends on what your conscience allowed.

Purza

Fourth of July

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