Hi friends,
Great post! The birthday thing really suprises me! I can't imagine the society changing their rules on that, but who knows, stranger things have happened. I was reading the "Knowledge" book the other night, and the reasoning it gave for not celebrating birthdays was that why should we honor imperfect humans for the day of their birth? It seemed very generalized, not a real concrete reason. And they figure since the only 2 experiences mentioned in the bible regarding birthdays are negative, then God must not want us to do it.
Even Christmas today no longer has any Pagan meaning. Sure, alot of our traditions were started by pagans and whomever, just because that was who was around then. Times have changed. Society has changed. I do think that what a poster above mentioned is so true, the JWs are different in some ways just for the sake of being different. There is no biblical reasoning for most holiday celebrations simply because they did not exist then! It's almost as if we are not allowed to have a society by JW standards. How did the rest of the world get by before JWs existed???
And yes, wedding rings also have a pagan beginning. The society picks and chooses what is and what isn't.
In our cong. though, associating with disfellowshipped people is a big no-no. They have given many talks on it recently. But we have alot that are df'd in our hall. Also, our PO recently gave a talk on music, even naming particular groups that we should not be listening to. He named " Godsmack" "Incubus", etc. Said that if any in our cong. were known to posess these CDs that we would not be used for any privliges in the cong. About 8 years ago, my husband mother died after a long bout with emphysema. My husbands family is not JW. So, in December when Christmas rolled around, the family wanted us to get together with them, I think mainly for comfort( his mom died in November), so her death was still pretty new. Well, about 2 weeks later, early one saturday morning, here come the Elders knocking on our door, saying that someone told them we were celebrating christmas and it needed to be dealt with. Could not believe it. My husband said that seeing that his mother had just died, he did not see what was wrong with getting together with his family due to the circumstances.
It turns out that our neighbor who is a JW told the Elders that a friend that came to her house told her that we were celebrating Christmas, so she told the Elders. My point with all of this is that where I live, things don't seem to be changing much at all, even still. I live in a very small community, maybe that's why the elders are so strict in some ways. Everything is scrutinized here. You can't even wear your hair in certain ways, and I am not talking extremes either. The elders here will jump you for wearing baseball cap back wards!
Well, you get the point. If they are changing, boy would that be great. I hope it happens here!
Thanks! Vita
