Your Birthday: A Pagan Conspiracy

[deelaem]

The JW's from my hometown in California didn't celebrate holidays or birthdays, but they made a HUGE deal out of weddings and baby showers. I can recall one woman who took out a loan so she could give her daughter a lavish baby shower. I guess they use those occasions to get out all their celebrating desires.

Come to think of it, I think they had Quinceañeras, too.

[FlorenceHamilton]

Google POCM.

Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.

Have fun.

[SealFan1963]

The JW's from my hometown in California didn't celebrate holidays or birthdays, but they made a HUGE deal out of weddings and baby showers. I can recall one woman who took out a loan so she could give her daughter a lavish baby shower. I guess they use those occasions to get out all their celebrating desires.

Come to think of it, I think they had Quinceañeras, too.

My brother is a Jehovah's Witness and this is what I have experienced too. My sister-in-law and her family love to party. They don't celebrate birthdays, true or any other national holiday, but they do have lots of fun. Huge BBQs during the summer with lots of booze, weddings with dancing, tons of food and again booze, baby showers that have 30 to 50 people. The best are the big number (10th, 20th, 30th, etc.) wedding anniversaries, now that is a party!

Now that their kids are grown, her parents have spent the last 10 years going on cruises, taking ballroom dancing lessons, visiting Ireland, visiting various states around the country.

They definitely are not boring and they definitely have fun.

[QAF_Rocks]

When I read Kyria Abrahams' memoir, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, she mentioned that some of the softer-hearted JW parents let their children celebrate "Totally Not Pagan Toy Party for Jehovah" instead of Christmas. ;)

I'd actually be happy in a religion that didn't have funerals, but that's just because I find them creepy and morbid and resent the fact that I'm socially compelled to participate in them.

[Elle]

JW don't celebrate Thanksgiving or any other national holidays. They pledge allegiance to Jehovah only, and not to any government entity. They also don't vote or join the military.

Yet they enjoy the freedom to have their own religion because of those who do join the military.

[Elle]

Lol at the comment too about funerals being pagan. Don't celebrate a person's life at all. Not when when they're born, not when they grow and not even when they pass. I feel really bad for the children in these families, not even allotted one day to them. I bet these people don't celebrate mother's day or father's day either.

Since everyone's born a sinner, and therefore bad and rotten, why have a day that might make someone feel good about themselves and for being alive?

*Mothering Day does have "pagan" roots, but the American mother's day has a different history starting after the civil war's end sometime (can't recall exact date) by Julie Howe and later by Anna Jarvis and Woodrow Wilson made it an offical holiday. Also around the time of the first women's rights groups before women could vote. So, I wonder if any fundies read this, they'll be happy to hear mother's day and later father's day were feminist ideas.*

May 10, 1908, was the first one. It was intended to be a day to get people to go visit their mothers. Anna was so distraught that it became so commercial with people encouraged to send generic cards instead of even writing a single sentence to their moms that she tried to have the holiday canceled.

[fluttershies]

Don't almost all Messianics follow the Biblical holidays (Passover etc)?

Also in the UK, most Christians don't celebrate Halloween because here the pagan origins of the holiday are more obvious. Anglicans and Catholics will celebrate All Souls' Day on November 1st though.

[Koala]

When someone dies, they've evolved to another existence and they aren't spoken of or grieved for.

Wow...I can't imagine that. :(

[debrand]

All that means is you need to have a Harry Potter cake at your next birthday.

Hooray! :dance:

[2xx1xy1JD]

When I read Kyria Abrahams' memoir, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, she mentioned that some of the softer-hearted JW parents let their children celebrate "Totally Not Pagan Toy Party for Jehovah" instead of Christmas. ;)

I'd actually be happy in a religion that didn't have funerals, but that's just because I find them creepy and morbid and resent the fact that I'm socially compelled to participate in them.

I often don't manage to make it to the funeral, because we schedule them for the day after the death, but I do go to visitation with the family ("shiva" in Judaism) during the week that follows. I've never been to an open-casket funeral, but I don't find funerals creepy. Some are incredibly sad, some are a celebration of a life well-lived, but I found that they tend to focus on the life of the deceased, and support for the family left behind.

In no-funeral religions, is there any acknowledgement of the loss? What about practical visits or help for the family members left behind? Is it okay to grieve?

[holothuroidea]

I was just watching the "Happy and Proud!" Sesame Street birthday party sketch.

I never realized just how eeeeeeeevillllll Sesame Street is. It got me thinking about childhood imagination and enthusiasm and how they must think those are evil too. It's clear why they squash children's spirits and why they grow up to be so vacuous and dim, and also why they have such trouble learning things like how to properly use apostrophes.

[QAF_Rocks]

I often don't manage to make it to the funeral, because we schedule them for the day after the death, but I do go to visitation with the family ("shiva" in Judaism) during the week that follows. I've never been to an open-casket funeral, but I don't find funerals creepy. Some are incredibly sad, some are a celebration of a life well-lived, but I found that they tend to focus on the life of the deceased, and support for the family left behind.

In no-funeral religions, is there any acknowledgement of the loss? What about practical visits or help for the family members left behind? Is it okay to grieve?

I have no personal experience with this church, but I read Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science by Lucia Greenhouse last year, and it seems like death is completely glossed over. Since they believe this world is just an illusion, there's no such thing as illness or death. They think the person is just passing on to another plane of existence. Grief and bereavement are pretty much denied/discouraged. Personally, I think this is more consistent than a lot of other religions, since most of them purport to believe in an afterlife, yet death is always treated as a final (instead of temporary) separation. At least Christian Scientists seem to put their money where their mouth is, even if it comes across to non-religious people as crazy and/or callous.

I've only been to two funerals, a secular Jewish one and a Sikh one, but I find death rituals upsetting, so I would prefer never to have to attend another. The problem is that there's a social expectation that you attend if it's someone close to you. I have absolutely no emotional attachment to corpses, and I find the idea of trotting out human remains creepy and morbid, so even a closed-casket funeral would be really terrible for me, especially if it's someone I loved.

[QAF_Rocks]

I was just watching the "Happy and Proud!" Sesame Street birthday party sketch.

I never realized just how eeeeeeeevillllll Sesame Street is. It got me thinking about childhood imagination and enthusiasm and how they must think those are evil too. It's clear why they squash children's spirits and why they grow up to be so vacuous and dim, and also why they have such trouble learning things like how to properly use apostrophes.

Also, no Jesus. Sesame Street is totally secular. The fundies won't let children watch things unless Jesus is hammered in there every second.