...Jehovah`s Witness Kids don`t miss Celebrating Birthdays,Christmas..ect..ect!!....

by OUTLAW 143 Replies latest jw friends

  • sweet pea
    sweet pea

    My JW parents were awesome. Faithful but liberal, if that's possible.

    They (mainly mum) always made sure we didn't miss out totally - we celebrated their anniversary May 25 and then 6 months later just for the hell of it - Nov 25 (nice and close to Christmas) and quite a few times Mum would throw a party for me where we all had a cake with a candle on it (just noone sung happy birthday) BUT and this is a big BUT, it just wasn't the same. As a kid, you desperately want to fit in and have the approval of all your peers. I always felt the odd one out, the weirdo and as confident as you become in later life I don't think this feeling ever evades you. Your psyche has been damaged irrevocably.

    I ALWAYS wanted to just be normal and celebrate everything, especially Christmas (oh, the wonder of it all - I used to almost be orgasmic when I spent time at my next door neighbours - my BF - at Christmas with his beautiful Xmas tree - LOL). I was always upset at having to turn down birthday invitations or after a while not even being invited anymore - this feeling still persists today when there are events that we are not invited to.......

    The only up side to this all is the joy that one experiences through your children - our two boys get so excited at anything to do with Birthdays/Christmas, etc - my heart just bursts every time I see their joy - I don't think your average Joe gets so much of a kick out of this as we do.

    PS At 38, I just celebrated my birthday for the first time with girlfriends and had a blast - a sick religion that portrays this as a bad thing. Gotta lot of making up to do.......

  • fern
    fern

    Yes, I still feel cheated for having missed all those activities Outlaw mentioned when I was a child. I will add to that list high school sports, dances, dating (without marriage in mind). I am glad to hear that some had parents that did special things for them and had special days so they dind't feel deprived but for most of us I'm sure we just went without. I always dreaded going back to school after Christmas break and hearing all the kids talk about what they got for Christmas. Made me feel like crap. I do take pleasure in knowing that I didn't raise my son in that cult and he got to do all the things I didn't. I made SURE of that!

  • reniaa
    reniaa

    I'm sure if I put up a forum on a non-religious site asking for bad experiences regarding these Holidays I would get loads. inc Children whose parents used them as excuses to get drunk, ones whose parents couldn't afford so didn't have the present to show to school friends and got scorned for not having it. or kids who got a card from a absentee dad at these times but no visits so they served as a reminder of a lack of Parent etc

    this is why I call these bait threads the fallacy is already there by only allowing the assumption that not doing them is wrong. I'm glad some on here are honest and say they did get parties and suchlike from their Jw parents who made an effort as I do myslf, to show my kids it has nothing to do with the party and presents and everything to do with what they are celebrating.

    Hi outlaw i have no plans to post anymore on this thread it's all yours and you can carry on and call for people to SHUN my replies or df me completely from this forum for my pro-witness opinions ^^

    Reniaa

  • shamus100
    shamus100

    Speaking from my viewpoint about holidays, I enjoyed them and they were nothing but positive. Now that I'm out of "the troof", holidays such as Christmas are some of the best times. It's like re-living my childhood again! Great fun, and I only give gifts to my nieces and nephews.

    Did I miss it when I became a dub? Yes and no. I wanted it to be the truth so badly that I concentrated on the bad instead of the good. In reality, there really was no bad to Christmas, IMO. My downfall was being a gullible idiot listening to fairy-tales of beheadings and all kinds of badness done at a birthday party, and equating that to all birthday parties.

    In reality, everything came from paganism, because the bible and all religion is nonsense.

  • MidwichCuckoo
    MidwichCuckoo
    Do english JWs miss having a thanksgiving even though only people in america celebrate it?..

    Nope - when I was a child I wasn't even aware of 'Thanksgiving', and I bet most English kids today only have a vague understanding, if any (it has nothing to do with our culture - just as the Americans/rest of World are totally indifferent to our 'Guy Fawkes' night), yet I was surrounded by kids celebrating Christmas (which is 'hammered' into kids from October onwards via TV etc) and birthdays - both of which are part of ENGLISH culture. Outlaw - the one thing I do recall, is being denied Easter eggs, and I was given money in lieu of. I would sometimes buy myself an egg so as I really wanted one.

  • dingo1
    dingo1

    my first birthday party was at 18. my first christmas was the year it snowed in houston; 2004, i think. i never missed it much.

  • dorayakii
    dorayakii

    Of course there are negative experiences of Christmas and other holidays, but that has nothing to do with the actual holiday and more to do with the fact that tose families are DYSFUNCTIONAL. Similarly the shallow, commercialisation of Christmas has nothing to do with the holiday itself, but more to do with how the big companies deform the meaning of it.

    Personally, I never felt like I was missing out. When the other children were preparing for Christmas or Easter I would get to play Lemmings on the schools only computer: an old Apple Macintosh. I never had a computer at home so I couldn't wait for the holiday season so I could spend time on my own in the classroom playing computer games.

    As for the actual holidays, I rarely spend them with my ultra-conservative parents (who one year took me on the ministry on Christmas Day). Apart from that year, I always spent the Christmas, Easter and Summer holidays with my more 'liberal' grandmother and aunt who invited most of the family for a turkey meal on Christmas Day. We'd watch all the Christmas films and pantomines, watch the Queen's Commonwealth speech and generally bond as a family. We even had Christmas crackers and sing the Christmas songs without any Christmas words in them (eg. Walking in the Air, Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolf etc. - A song was fine to sing as long as it didn't have words like "Christmas", "Jesus", or "holy" in it). I'd buy my cousins small gifts and I would always get money to spend on what I wanted. We also have a crazy party on New Year's Eve, eat snacks and, when I was older, drink alcohol. We'd dance crazily to music and stay up to watch Big Ben strike midnight.

    I always felt I missed out on birthdays though. I always spent my birthday with my parents and they never acknowledged it apart from noticing that it was the beginning of the new service year (1st Spetember). I missed out on attending my friends' birthdays too. When I was about 5/6 I asked to go to a party but my dad said" no".

    Overal though I didn't really feel like I'd missed out on anything because I convinced myself that I didn't want to clebrate these things anyway. I was very good at actually believing that I didn't want to.

  • reniaa
    reniaa

    Is this all about approval among our peers and being the same as others then? if we were in a land of witnesses having parties and celebrations as we do as witness, then would our children still see a lack?

    Is this all about the 'grass being greener on the other side' and not knowing until we've stepped over?

    I did have a chance to see one christmas at my in-laws house were I got to see it up close and personal and found it to be less than magical, it was just a glorified party nothing special that couldn't be given to my kids without the christmas label.

    Being separate to the majority opinion is not easy and maybe our children suffer most in this case because it's hard to explain it's not the fun stuff we disaprove of but the celebration and what it represents.

    Reniaa

  • purplesofa
    purplesofa

    Hi outlaw i have no plans to post anymore on this thread it's all yours and you can carry on and call for people to SHUN my replies or df me completely from this forum for my pro-witness opinions ^^

    Reniaa

    Glad to see you can change your mind as I see you posted after your post above. This scripture came to mind though.

    Matthew 5:37

    Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No.' Anything more is from the evil one.

  • restrangled
    restrangled

    Outlaw, it wasn't just the holidays, it was the weeks of lead up to them too. The music, artwork, and parties in school. My parents tried to make up for it but it's exactly like the following commercial.

    I hope this embeds.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qb0vquRcys

    r.

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