Wedding Anniversaries vs. Birthdays

PopeOfEruke

JW's often have big parties or "gatherings" to celebrate Wedding Anniversaries, esp. for the big milestones (20th, 50th Anniversary etc).

The process of these parties almost exactly mimic a typical birthday celebration: the couple of honour sit up the front, various people give speeches, show "honour" to the happy couple, there is a meal and drinks, usually an anniversary cake.

Exactly the same as a birthday party.

So why is it OK to celebrate an anniversary of a wedding but NOT the annoversary of a birth?? When it's usually the "wedding" which sooner or later results in a birth?? Of course there is no logical explanantion..

But I wasa thinking and I believe I now understand the JW leadership mentality.

Banning Birthday parties hits the Kids!! It's biggest impact is on children from the time of their earliest memory.

Not celebrating birthdays makes it more sure that the children will be groomed for the cult from their birth. It's a form of cult recruitment for JW offspring. It gets them use to be "different", "persecuted", "standing out from the crowd". It has NOTHING to do with any bible teaching.

Wedding anniversaries? Who cares? Once the JW child reaches maturity and marries, then celebrating Anniversaries is allowed. It's the children which are most valuable to the cult so that's why the birthday ban is instigated.

The more I see JW reasoning from the view of an outsider the more clear it becomes just how the cult leadership works.

Pope

under_believer

I disagree. The birthday injunction is just an artifact from days gone by, one which they would never impose if they were a brand new cult today. They have no compelling reason to discard the practice. Though you're completely correct when you say that it serves one of the primary needs of a cult, which is to separate their followers from the world mentally and physically and to cause persecution and teasing which increases cult solidarity.

helncon

I could never understand why wedding anniversaries where deemed more important than your birth.

It was never justified why JW don't celebrarte this.

Yes it is the children who miss out.

And the adults who get to indulge.

Helen

Frequent_Fader_Miles

Their "biblical" reasoning on this issue leaves a lot to be desired also... the 2 birthday celebrations mentioned in the bible ended in death. A 3-year-old child has sounder reasoning than than that! Then it's claimed that a birthday celebration is "idolatry". Is a birthday party really any more idolatry than what goes on at the Kingdumb Hell when the Circuit Overseer comes around?

Nellie

Ohh Frequent Fader If you could have seen my face when after 20+ years I discovered that people slipped the CO envelopes of money during his visit! I was shocked!!! My husband, on the other hand, couldn't believe I'd never seen it before. Apparently, it's a longstanding tradition amonst the R&F.

Frequent_Fader_Miles

It certainly is! There's also the flurry of sheperding calls, dumb "local needs" talks, and everyone acting all giddy and stupid just because the great CO is here ... How pathetic indeed. Why does HE get all the idolatry and I can't celebrate my OWN birthday?

Gopher

Here's one so-called reason I heard about why anniversary parties were OK for JW's:

With a wedding anniversary, you've actually accomplished something good -- two people working together, serving Jehovah, etc.

Whereas with a birhtday party, all the person supposedly did was just grow a year older.

But this reasoning is actually anti-Biblical. Didn't the apostle Paul write it was PREFERABLE for a man to remain single, so as to serve God free from worries?

So if the WTS wanted to encourage singleness, they would actually ALLOW birthday parties (at least for adults) and disallow anniversary parties that celebrate the fact that people didn't listen to the apostle Paul and stay single!

ex-nj-jw

people slipped the CO envelopes of money during his visit!

WHAT!!!??? I Never knew that! where in the hell was I, obviously not paying attention. I'm not sure why, but some of this JW crap still catches me off guard

nj

mrsjones5

A birthday is just an anniversary of a birth likewise a wedding anniversary is the celebration of the birth of a marriage

It's interchangable and I celebrate both

Josie

Hortensia

new picture, Mrs. Jones? I knew people gave money to the CO and his wife, ostensibly because they were serving the cong. and didn't have jobs that paid money. But now I wonder just how much they took in? No one was keeping track except the CO and his wife. That's part of what's wrong with religions - no accounting for the money donated by believers.

Wedding Anniversaries vs. Birthdays

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