This is an essay that I posted on H20 back when I was but a wee baby apostate LOL. This was my first Christmas experience and I am re-posting it in the hopes that it will help someone out who is new here. I just got an email from an exJW that I met on a totally non-religious forum and she is putting up her first tree this year...her kids are so excited..and this got me thinking about this old post.
My views on god and all sure have changed since then (agnostic now) but the post still sums up how I feel about the holidays.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
love
essie
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As posted on H2O December 4th, 2000
"What the holidays mean to me" a post by Esmeralda which could also be called:
"Have yourself a merry little..." ( Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, insert holiday of choice here)
OR,
"Why the artificial tree in my living room has nothing to do in my mind with the plastic baby Jesus in the nativity scene outside City Hall."
I'm awake at this inhuman hour (at least for me) before the sun sipping my coca cola trying to ease my sour stomach. Another night of sleep lost, courtesy of the 'higher moral values' of my Jehovah's Witness relatives. Thank you very much.
The M.S. is acting up this morning and my left hand is really weak. I can't really feel my fingers on the keys so that's slowing me down in typing. But this is stuck in my head and if I don't get it out, I won't be able to go back to sleep. So bear with me, (and if you care to), read on and find out why to me, (just one 29 year old mommy from the Midwest) the 'holy days' of this season have nothing at all to do with their origin.
This is the first year of my life I have owned a "Christmas" tree. I am fully aware of the ramifications of this in the mind of my Witness relatives.
"Paganism! Idolatry! False Worship!"
Okay. Take that opinion if you want. Have any of you contemplated the significance/ origin of your wedding rings lately?
"Saturnalia! Roman Orgies! Sugar-coated rituals that displease God!"
Looked at the names of the months on your calendar, have you? Going to start calling the months by other names? Perhaps the names of the 12 apostles instead? Oh, but then what would you do about Judas? No good naming a month after him. What to do?
"Greed! Commercialism! "Holidays" have nothing to do with religion anymore anyway!"
And...this is a bad thing? I thought you didn't like the fact that they had anything to do with religion to begin with!!!
While I was standing in the long lines of frustrated shoppers at Toys R Us last month, (I shopped early) I had a lot of time to think about what Christmas means to most of them. It looked like, to many of them, the most religious experience associated with the whole thing was knowing they got
the last Rugrats singing doll and that their kid wouldn't be crying come December 25th.
December 25th. Hmm. Which just so happens to be my daughters birthday. Boy does that cloud the issue even more for my family.
"Birthdays! Only Murderers in the Bible Celebrated them! Glorifying the creation and not the Creator!"
And...anniversary celebrations would be glorifying what? If you reduce it down to the bare facts for most JW couples, couldn't you say that anniversary celebrations are really having a party to remember and glorify the first time they, um, consummated? (If they behaved according to the rules, that is). Is that really proper, brothers?
My point in all of this is, the plastic fir tree in my living room (four and a half feet tall, pre-wired with 200 gold lights, brought to you by Hammacher Schlemmer) has nothing to do with anything except showing my child a broader view of the world. Understanding of others. Tolerance.
With connecting myself to my new family, my husband's parents, who flew all the way out here to cook me turkey on Thanksgiving and bring family heirloom ornaments that pre-date my husband's birth in their family.
Precious things, to them. Sacred things, because family is a sacred thing.
Not a religious symbol in the lot of them.
There are tiny glittered ornaments that my husband (JackDawson to those of you who've seen him post here before) made with his little fingers at the same age my daughter is now. Crystal ones that say "baby's first Christmas" from before he was old enough to make his own ornaments.
My mother in law hauled these, carefully wrapped in tissue all the way from New England. On a cramped, over crowded flight to here, a major airline hub. Through the crowds. In the cold. That's love, folks.
All so she could sit on my living room floor, with her 'step' granddaughter (though no one in our family ever uses that harsh term) and hang them on our little Hammacher Schlemmer.
Each ornament has a story. We sat for hours, drinking coffee and laughing as myself and my daughter got a lesson in family history from my husband's parents.
"Remember when Grandma made this one? Remember the year we got this one? Remember how the cat loved to bat at this one at the bottom of the tree when he was a kitten?"
I learned. We bonded. We became better acquainted in a way that never could have happened any other way.
It's also not about the gifts. Though, shopping for them has been a lot of fun for me (thank the Universe for online shopping). I have also enjoyed having an excuse to thank people in my life who've been especially kind to me in the past year, in a way that at other times may have seemed odd or even inappropriate. When else can you send a tin of cookies to your wonderful dentist or top-notch primary care physician and not be thought a nutcase?
Many people have compared life in the Watchtower to the alien species of the Borg from Star Trek. For those of you who know the genre well, my next comparison will be familiar. For those who don't, I hope that this will still make sense in the end. Bear with me.
There is a planet in the Star Trek universe called Bajor. I have always particularly related to the inhabitants of this fictitious world, because oftheir tortured and confused relationship with their religion, and their deities, "The Prophets".
The Prophets are shrouded in mystery, and vague generalities but are never to be questioned. (Much like the Governing Body) Whatever happens to the people, pestilence, famine, abuse from the bigger, uglier alien planet next door, is said to be "the Will of the Prophets" for one reason or another.
These folks want to live good lives, have a sense of spirituality, and just 'be' in the universe. Much like a lot of people in/out of the whole Watchtower environment. But no matter what they do, they're unsure of what the almighty Prophets want. Because everything is so vague.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
The Society (though I hear they don't call themselves that anymore) uses the same old vague and muddied issues to keep people from reaching out to each other. They are supposed to show such love, even 'loving their enemies' and yet, what do they do? They insult, belittle, and ridicule the principles
and beliefs that people of other Christian and Non Christian religions alike hold most dear. The holidays are but one example.
If Christmas makes people stop and think about Jesus, is that so bad? If it doesn't, but makes them show kindness that they ordinarily wouldn't in their busy day to day lives to someone else, is THAT so bad? If it causes them to reach into themselves and realize how lucky they are and give something to
someone less fortunate, is that so bad?
I don't believe it is. To me, this time of year is just a great big reminder of how lucky I am. For my warm bed. The food in the fridge. The love of my husband and child, and in laws. The fact that I'm alive.
And that is definitely not bad. I have a lot of things to be grateful for.
Gratitude! I knew I'd brought up the Bajorans for another reason.
The fictitious Bajorans supposedly have a great celebration every year known as the Gratitude Festival.
This excerpt is taken from the Star Trek Encyclopedia (forgive me, Viacom/Paramount) and explains pretty much how I'd like to celebrate. This is a holiday philosophy I can really get behind:
"Bajoran Gratitude Festival:
Annual Bajoran celebration, the biggest holiday of the year. During the holiday, participants wrote down their problems on Renewal Scrolls then placed them to be burned in a special brazier so that their troubles could symbolically turn to ashes. "Peldor Joi" is a Bajoran phrase used in celebration of the festival."
Gratitude. Problems symbolically turning to dust. Thinking about something bigger than ourselves, even if only for a little while.
That's what I'm going to be celebrating this year.
Peldor Joi, everyone.
~esmeralda
