Anything that brings people togther in the spirit of love and friendship is a good thing...
Even if you don't have a prescription for it?
How many of you atheists, agnostics, deists are celebrating Xmas??
by SweetBabyCheezits 56 Replies latest jw friends
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SweetBabyCheezits
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thetrueone
Who says you have to celebrate Christmas or any other far flung festival of religious origin.
I know alot of people who never been associated with the JWS and they never played up to
this bogus religious event either. If your daughter has been indoctrinated with JW beliefs
she most likely wont miss participating big time into Christmas celebrations.
Why is it that people who leave the JWS think they have to automatically celebrate anything,
you'd be surprised to know how many people not JWS, shrug off these old traditional celebrations as well.
Make your own individualist self expressive thought the most important to you and
your family rather than being influenced from outside social events such as these old traditional celebrations.
Take care
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ziddina
OOOOOOO!!! Robinella! New stove??? Make batches of cookies as Xmas gifts!!! Decorate them with icing, raisens, sparkly sugar and stuff!!!
Also Gingerbread Men!!! Yummy!
Me, I'm an atheist with Goddess-worship leanings... I probably will put up lights this year, even tho I swore I wouldn't do Xmas again after I skipped it last year and had so much extra time for sewing - but then spent a LOT of my time wishing we'd had lights...
Dunno if I'm going to do a tree this year - if the lights go up, though, so will a tree...
I celebrate the so-called "pagan" aspects of Xmas freely - the evergreen tree represents everlasting life, since it stayed green thru the winter when all the other trees "died"; the mistletoe grows upon the mighty Oak tree, which represents certain aspects of the Green Man, lord of the woods and the wild - and the "Horned King", too... The "Yule Log" is an old Norse tradition which pertains to the evergreen tree, but represents [I think...] the evergreen tree giving out life-giving light at the darkest time of winter...
And the fun one can have with food!!! I'm probably going to attempt a gingerbread wreath around Thanksgiving, so I'll be in practice to make one or more for Xmas - probably give a couple to my neighbors as gifts... Gingerbread men, decorating the tree with candy canes - which I can't do personally, since hubby eats them all... And pumpkin pie, and home-made fruitcake WITHOUT the blasted dried-out fruit one usually finds in the stuff - buy FRESH fruit and put it in the cake; as much brandy as you wish, and an Xmas ham or turkey or duck - ooops... Hubby doesn't like duck either...
Anyhoo... I have fun, in spite of hubby...
After I got out 25 years ago, I celebrated Xmas with great joy - until I ended up being the person who did ALL the work at my house... My enthusiasm waned a bit after that... Halloween quickly became my favorite holiday, and I tend to put more time into it, anymore, than Xmas...
Plus, we don't have any kids, and Xmas is really for kids... Mind you, I'm a great big kid myself, but one can only receive so many shoes and purses and pieces of jewelry and gift cards to JoAnn Fabrics.. Wait a sec... I can NEVER have too much FAAAAAAAA-bric!!!
Zid
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thetrueone
By the way growing up a JW didn't mean we didn't get the family together for a big turkey dinner around that time.
Christmas time for us meant skiing trips, dinners at restaurants and movies, I never felt I was left out of all the fun
and good times.
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undercover
Make your own individualist self expressive thought the most important to you and your family rather than being influenced from outside social events such as these old traditional celebrations.
I agree with a lot of your post. Just because we left the JWs behind doesn't mean we have to jump on the xmas bandwagon. I have no desire to get caught up in all the trappings of xmas, though I enjoy certain aspects of it...so I enjoy what I like and leave the rest.
But for some JWs, just trying to see the other side, they may have secretly missed xmas. Some may have been converted to JWism and left it behind, yet still yearned for those traditions they grew up with. I can see those that really like the holiday and the tradtions and want to enjoy it again. And that's the real freedom once you leave the JWs...to choose whether you want to celebrate a holiday or don't want to. JWs don't choose, they're coerced to shun it. But I agree, don't feel like you have to celebrate a holiday just because everyone else is. Do it because you want to....or don't do it because it's not your thing.
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ziddina
"Atheists enjoy the ideals of human freedom and dignity while elaborating theories to explain the foundation for them away. ..."
Ohhh, brother.... Leave it to Burn The Ships....
I love the way some Christians work so hard to ignore their special form of theocratic fascism while claiming that THEY instituted the ideals of democracy, which - need I remind them - actually originated in HEATHEN Greece and Rome, based upon HEATHEN ideals of relative equality...
And as has been pointed out in other threads, many of the authors of the American Constitution were nominally Deists, and some leant very strongly towards atheism...
Such Christians who ballyhoo this supposed 'democracy' that Christianity supposedly authored, have ignored the political and religious climates that LED TO such non-religious governmental systems being established, in the first place...
In the late 1700's, the people of America weren't that far away in time from the witch-hysteria in Salem, the religious wars of Europe, and even the witch-burnings - some of which were still taking place while the founding fathers were children and even into their adulthood...
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt
"The classical period of witchhunts in Europe and North America falls into the Early Modern period or about 1480 to 1700, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 executions. [1] The most common estimates are 40,000-60,000.
The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In the Kingdom of Great Britain, witchcraft ceased to be an act punishable by law with the Witchcraft Act of 1735. In Germany, sorcery remained punishable by law into the late 18th century. .."
So, the founding fathers of America - as well as the lawmakers of many other European countries who also eventually based their governments upon a democratic model - had numerous examples of the dire consequences of CHRISTIAN-biased government and thinking...
The bible itself speaks of an absolute rule by one deity - with disobedience punished by DEATH, in most cases... The reason Christians didn't execute those within the congregation that went against the Christian edicts, was due to the forceful presence of the ROMAN GOVERNMENT, which prevented such absolutist brutality...
Until the Roman government itself was subverted into the service of the Christian faith... At which point, the Dark Ages descended upon Europe...
Goddess, I LOVE these Christian idiots and their attempts at revisionist history!!!
Zid
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thetrueone
The commercialization of Christmas makes it difficult and perhaps annoying and this is true to people who actual participate in it.
Taking a walk around the neighborhood last night I saw people already have Christmas trees decorated in their living rooms
and the day is more than a month away......sheesh.
I've never put up a Christmas tree myself after leaving the JWS some 30 years ago but I like to put up some lights,
makes the neighborhood look cool in the evenings. As for gift exchanging sure I bring gifts to the nieces and nephews who celebrate
who aren't JWS and the significant other a little something, certainly a lot less stress put onto that part of Christmas.
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LongHairGal
SWEETBABYCHEEZITS,
Even though I am an agnostic, I love Christmas and the decorations, smells of baking, visiting family, etc. I love walking through the neighborhood at night looking at the lights and decorations on people's homes.
I would celebrate Christmas with a vengeance just as a protest to the JW religion for how they tried to take the joy out of life.
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SweetBabyCheezits
Who says you have to celebrate Christmas or any other far flung festival of religious origin.
Yeah, TrueOne, I'm also wondering who said we have to celebrate it . Because last time I checked it was our choice.
I totally respect your choice to not celebrate and I understand your viewpoint but I explained our stance on holidays on another thread, which I'll paste here....
Okay, so before we got DF'd a few weeks back, we weren't sure if we were going to start celebrating holidays... for a few reasons:
- Due to our JW past, the whole "because that's the way we've always done it" mentality sickens me. I'm not drawn to doing things out of tradition or custom if it has no real significance to my family.
- Since we're not religious and we don't believe any holy books are really holy, there's no actual need for us to celebrate religious holidays.
- We didn't want friends/family to drive by and see us celebrating and make the assumption we got out of the WT so we could party with pagans.
But once we found ourselves being shunned, our perspective totally changed:
- We despise the JW "separateness" thing as a method of control. To continue to NOT celebrate holidays would kinda be going along with the JW tradition.
- Just because we celebrate, doesn't mean it's for religious reasons. We go to parties and get-togethers for no other reason than to have a good time. Why should holidays be any different? Since we don't fear an omniscient, jealous deity is waiting to see if we display a Xmas tree so he can punish us, it's a null issue.
- Old JW friends/family are already judging us, regardless of holiday celebrations. We've learned that we cannot enjoy life if we're always concerned about what the decidedly uninformed think of us. If our actions aren't hurting our children, ourselves, or anyone else, whose business is it? Ours. This view has helped us recover immensely.
After arriving at these conclusions, we decided that holidays are fair game for our family with one little stipulation: we explain to our children the origins of the holidays, what they do/don't mean to many people in modern times, and what they do/don't mean to our family.
Ultimately our perspective changed from "why celebrate?" to "why NOT celebrate?" and after coming to the above conclusions, it was a pretty easy decision.
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Giordano
I'm a non-believer, a gentle cynic who does not care if a god exists or not. My values are closer to those of a secular humanist. So basically I outrank religious people LOL.
When we got out back in 1968/69 we were looking forward to celebrating holidays.
Christmas and Thanksgiving is family time...... that side of the family that celebrates. Our JW side missed out on extra family time over the years.
It was never religious for us. We were pretty poor for a long while. And even today we cap what we'll spend and if anyone wants to get me a gift it's usually a bottle of good wine, a book, I'll mention which ones I'd like if asked. The gift I cherish the most is the fellowship with my family and our grandchildren.
We don't do anything for New Years Eve but on New Years Day some of our friends throw a party to welcome the new year and that has become a nice tradition.