These responses ring very true. When I began the process of converting to Catholicism this was one of the first distinctions I made between the two belief-systems. Everywhere the WTBTS and mainstream Christianity differ, it seems that the WTBTS departs from the accepted doctrine with no other purpose than to be divergent. Or perhaps that is a characteristic of their Fundamentalist roots. It just seems that the fundamentalist logic that explains their radical beliefs merely seems to have been added to justify a belief they arrived at before they thought it through, hence the desperate feats of fallacious logic. Whether it is a prohibition against celebrating birthdays or decrying any reverence of the cross as idolatry, the attitude is primarily one of debasing everything else, so that there is no possible chance of interfaith relations, and thus less chance of conversion.
So when Jesus took a back seat in the WTBTS/Fundamentalist theology he was demoted to the least possible role a ?Christian? organization could accept. With that, showing Jesus any reverence on par with God would be unacceptable in any manner, and the gap between the JW?s and every religion that identified Christ as the central figure of its faith would be unbridgeable. To make the distinction even more unmistakable, let?s make the cross into merely a signpost, too. And for good measure, how about we restrict the Eucharist, his body and blood, to only the elite of the elite. How many? Well, the book of Revelations throws around a lot of numbers; we?ll pick one from there.