by juanvazquez88 4 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Hello!!
I dont know if this question had been answered before, but someone can tell me when the society start to forbid the celebration of birthdays?? In "Proclaimers" quote from Jon Cameron´s "Captives of a concept" its says that it began in some point after 1919, year after the inspection of Jesus.
Im married with a jw, and she dont want to throw a birthday party to ours 2 year´s old son, but we can go to birthdays of cousins, etc etc. Someone with similar experiences??
Saludos desde Mexico!!
I have not found a direct answer. However, it seems to be soon after Christmas was stopped in 1928
Yearbook 1975 p147
What caused the Bible Students to stop celebrating Christmas? Richard H. Barber gave this answer: “I was asked to give an hour talk over a [radio] hookup on the subject of Christmas. It was given December 12, 1928, and published in The Golden Age #241 and again a year later in #268. That talk pointed out the pagan origin of Christmas. After that, the brothers at Bethel never celebrated Christmas again.”
“Did we mind putting those pagan things away?” asks Charles John Brandlein. “Absolutely not. This was just complying with new things learned, and we had never known before they were pagan. It was just like taking a soiled garment off and throwing it away.” Next, birthday celebrations and Mother’s Day were discarded—more creature worship. Sister Lilian Kammerud recalls: “How readily the brothers all dropped these holidays and admitted they were glad to be free. New truths always make us happy and . . . we felt we were privileged to know things that others were ignorant about.”
Job's sons celebrated their special days!!
(Job 1:4) And his sons went and held a banquet at the house of each one on his own day; and they sent and invited their three sisters to eat and drink with them.
(Colossians 2:16) Therefore let no man judge YOU in eating and drinking or in respect of a festival or of an observance of the new moon or of a Sabbath.Even if pagans really did hijack birthdays for their own purposes, (as with many things) it does not make the celebration scripturally wrong!
The Bible does not forbid the celebration of birthdays - just as it does not forbid the celebrating of wedding anniversaries!
It has to be reallied that the JWS taken position of not cerebrating birthdays comes in on the realization that birthday celebrating has some originality in pagan traditions of celebrating the annual day of certain gods.
Of course now days its more about showing love and respect for an individual and their life, remember Jesus greatest commandment was to love one another, so celebrating someones birthday might fall under that direction.
