Well, the thing with Xmas is it's still just a human tradition like any other. One can choose to participate or not, regardless of what JWs teach about it. I personally, since I've very few memories of it in my life, choose not to participate, for the most part. I've gone to an office gift exchange once, but that's about it. It holds no meaning for me, right or wrong. Like with all the other holidays, it is essentially an alien culture to me.
Maybe that's the impact of mind control on me. The phobias are almost certainly still there. I don't involve myself in holidays or watch horror movies or use foul language (at least not anywhere but inside my head, except the PG mild language found in the original Star Wars) because of JW indoctrination. That's probably not even the half of it. There may be stuff I'm not even conscious of that can be attributed to that. Certainly fear/guilt associated with divorce was/is probably one of those things. Phobias about sex, parties, non-JWs, maybe even ex-JWs, too--all of that is probably there.
I just figure, I trimmed off as many irrational beliefs as I could and kept the ones I thought might protect me from self-destructing too much once I left the cult. Still didn't turn out well, but here we are.
--sd-7