Because it's fun - Can it really be that simple? (page 2)

SixofNine

"p.s. you know darn tootin' well that I respect the obscurity of your beliefs!..lol..."

!! ya gotta admit, that was funny!

LittleToe

It was bl**dy hillarious

Pats Six's lil pointy head.

Elsewhere

I refuse to answer your questions because it's fun!

SixofNine

I mean, it's like asking "why not get the boys together and dress up like geisha girls for the day; heck, we've been walking on their backs for the past few years anyway?"

Because it's fun!

you can't make this stuff up, lol.

lonelysheep

LOL @ KidA and SixofNine!

How could I follow that?!

SirNose586

I bet Bush slept with his wife and went to Crawford to clear a double-helping of brush just to feel manly again, after wearing that get-up.

Nellie

How easily a topic sways . . .

I guess it is possible to over-analyize something!

Fun isn't a bad thing, really, but if you want another take on it, I started celebrating Christmas (and other holidays) because I wanted to rid myself of the JW-induced aversion to it. I also wanted to re-integrate myself with non-JW society, and saw this as a perfect opportunity to adopt social behaviours and activities that defined non-JW culture.

The first year we put up a Christmas tree, I had honest-to-goodness panic attacks over it. To top it off, I had some JW relatives call a few days before Christmas and inform me that they were going to be coming from out of town and dropping in for a visit. What took a whole day to assemble took less than an hour to dismantle and erase any evidence of its existence. Everything went up in the attic until after the visit, then it took another day to re-assemble it.

The next time that impromptu visit occurred (a few years later) the tree stayed up; the Christmas lights stayed up. That was because a mental shift had occurred in me: I stopped caring so much about what JWs thought about me. The side benefit is that the impromptu visits have never happened again... it is now their burden to bear, not mine.

I also felt that I needed to overcome the social "stunting" that being a JW caused in me. "Celebrating" anything just wasn't something that I learned to do as a JW. It was limited to the occasional weddings and baby showers that were overshadowed by WT admonition to be careful so as not to have too much fun and avoid Stumbling™ others.

The other thing that's good about holidays like Christmas and Easter and birthdays is their role in developing social traditions and creating opportunities for extended families to take time out of their routine to focus on the family. Holidays become a way of solidifying families by creating markers in our family's collective memory and contribute to identifying shared experiences with each other. When we were JWs, the WTS created what I feel are "surrogate" social observances in the form of District Conventions™, Circuit Assemblies™, Special Assembly Days™, and Circuit Overseer Visits™ which often serve to bring families together to worship the Organization™. In order to overcome the obvious loss of this social structure and its function as a social "glue" and the void that develops in no longer practicing these JW observances when we become exJWs, it's actually socially and psychologically beneficial to engage in alternate social bonding activities, by replacing old behaviours with new ones that serve the same purpose.

It's well-known that in order to drop a bad habit successfully, the individual needs to replace it with a better alternative, otherwise a void is created that can draw the person back into the old habit - it's no different when we leave the JWs. All these JW related-activities (from Meeting Attendance™, to Field Service™, to Assemblies™ and Conventions™) need to be replaced with suitable alternatives that serve the same social function, otherwise we can be socially and psychologically vulnerable to being drawn back in to the cult, even when we know on an intellectual level that everything they teach and practice is wrong.

The fact that celebrating these holidays is fun just makes them better, if you ask me.

garybuss

I like all the holidays and I observe them all with celebration. There's nothing religious at all to me about any holidays. I like being with family and friends.

Nellie

Scully, I look forward to being where you ARE - right now I'm closer to being where you WERE . . .

Because it's fun - Can it really be that simple?

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