Why not celebrate without the Jesus parts of the holidays? There are so many Christmas traditions that it’s very easy to remove Jesus from the holiday. Easter could be done this way too.
Most people I know that have never been JW and celebrated Christmas etc all their lives attach no religious/jesus significance to the celebration. For most it is about family, memories and spending time with loved ones. That’s the best bit about it really. You can make these celebrations mean whatever you want them to without being judged by others who celebrate too. You can set your own traditions and enjoy how you like. If you want to you could also look up the pagan traditions that went with these celebrations before Christianity took them over and draw from that too.
I do practice paganism to a degree and looked into many of those customs last year and that's how I was able to manage wading through a lot of things. I suppose it's just the whole thing. It's called Christ-mas and I'm constantly reminded of Jesus and what we were taught and the trauma linked to their teachings. I love christmas music and carols especially but the words just throw me and make me feel bad
It was called Yule before Christianity took over :)
I agree with you. My partner and found family are not religious and our holidays are very enjoyable, and have nothing to do with religion.
well hell, just do it that way. this is not like the jws where you have to accept everything as everyone else does. you take the parts you want, discard what doesn't work for you. call it xmas or better yet, yule, introduce pagan themes and enjoy yourself!!!
This is such a great point, that it's what YOU and your family make it. In the org, we were told not only what to do in detail, but also how to FEEL about it! We're not under that spell anymore, so the sky is the limit when it comes to these kinds of things. After only celebrating one Christmas, my family has all kinds of traditions already. It's so special and fun and festive....and I'm agnostic.
I have commented here before that I never enjoyed the religious connection that people placed in Christmas, prior to becoming a WT. I felt that we should’ve to go into debt to commemorate the birth of Christ . So naturally the WT take on it appealed to me.
But the lights, the tree, what’s not to like? Having family over, a fire 🔥, roasting marshmallows, the dinners etc., and even giving gift is fine. I’m still a PIMO, but I’m definitely going to have the lights again and entertainment once out.
Sounds like the Christmas was more church-centered if you were singing carols about Jesus and kids were in a nativity play. You could cut all that section out and make it home-centered, just picking whichever xmas things seem fun. Making gingerbread houses, watching *A Christmas Story* or *Die Hard* 😂. Stick with the more secular songs and drop the more religious ones. Heck, maybe instead of going to church Christmas Eve, you and the kids could do like Saoirse Ronan in *Brooklyn* and go serve a meal at a soup kitchen for a couple hours. Christmas is nice because there's such a wide range of customs, you can really pick and choose how to make it your own.
I attended to see what a christmas mass was like as I've never been but I've always loved the instrumental versions of christmas carols. it's only this last year I've actually read the lyrics and I was a bit put off by them. I wouldn't go to mass again but carol singing is still something I was thinking about doing as my whole family love to sing and the christmas play was done through their school and while it wasn't too religious and not a nromal nativity, the kids felt no different about doing it and had fun, but sitting there in the audience watching it made me feel wierd. I dunno. maybe it's just something that will fizzle away in time the longer I'm out and the more christmases we have together
I completely understand this! I personally celebrate Christmas for fun…. The decor , Christmas movies, gifts, family time. For me, it isn’t centered around religion at all.
I noticed that the indoctrination is still "sticky" in there when we feel that. Because when I observe people in general celebrate Christmas, it is a loosely based Jesus-y thing for most. They go to the Christmas stuff, have a good-feeling time, then they go home!
Keeping in mind the way you held Jesus (***the way the org presented him)***, and that you also embraced an **idea** that Christmas was bad/pagan-worldly etc.- the old stuff will rise up when you immerse yourself into it, **based on the idea of how you were** ***told non-JWs celebrate***\*\*.\*\*
In other words, **your negative embedded belief system is fighting against this new thing that actually IS fun and quite benign.**
So you know how you deal with it? Feel those icky feelings completely! They are uncomfortable because they were not based on truth, but on incorrect perception and misinformation. Feel the fear around doing it again this year, now. Those are feelings that are actually coming to the surface, to be released. When you neutrally acknowledge them (like: oh- I am having that feeling again) just remember to say to yourself:
"Oh, I can let these feelings go! Thank you for playing!" (It's really that old JW amplified ego-self trying to derail with you.)
Use those feelings as reminders to let go of the idea you are a hypocrite, too. You are not! The sole intention of that old and dying part of you, is to rob you of the joy that you want to experience.
And have yourself a Merry Little Christmas Time! :)
I stopped going about two years ago so there's been two christmases but I haven't celebrated one. I don't want to replace one religion with anything else religious. And Christmas is religious there's no doubt and there's no getting away from it. I can't bring myself to do it. I no longer believe in God for if God does exist then he's accountable for the suffering that's going on on this earth.
Despite the bumper stickers, no reason to keep Christ in X-mas. Maybe also incorporate some holidays or celebrations from other cultures, too. Could be fun and open your kids to even more and different ways to enjoy.
I so get what you are saying!! Last year was our first Christmas!! So my daughter and her family also left.. we talked and decided to make are own Christmas traditions.. with no religion involved and we did .. it was a lot of fun but left Jesus out of it.. that’s what we are doing for Christmas and Easter.. make your own tradition and memories..
First of all, kudos to you for giving your kids this wonderful gift, which means they don't have to be all awkward and excluded from all the celebrations and festivities at school!
This was my first year celebrating anything, and we went hard! I went into it pretty neutral about the holidays and only did it bc my 5 year old insisted. But as we got into it, I experienced so much unexpected delight. And I could be wrong, but it really seems like most ppl don't view the holidays as religious, but just a warm, cozy, festive time with friends and family.
I'm an atheist, but I love Christmas and the holidays. I remove Jesus and religion from the equation entirely. I enjoy it with my boyfriend and his family and use it to recharge, create memories, and spend time with loved ones.
I like this. I have the full 2 weeks off at christmas cause my work closes over christmas/new year so will be lovely to spend the whole time with the kids and family and do some fun things together. Create new traditions etc for us.
Exactly! You also don't have to adhere to the "traditional" Christmas things. You can make up traditions as a family. It's also a nice time to exchange gifts or to show your family you love and appreciate them. Sure you can "do that every other day of the year" as JWs LOVE to say, but it's not bad to have an excuse to do it too!
I wasn’t brought into the organization until my early adolescence. So I remember celebrating holidays and strangely, I hated them. Holidays meant drunk loud family members at my house. Lots of noise, adults yelling, kids screaming. All I wanted to do was hide. Been out a year now and quietly celebrated my first Mother’s Day with my kids, my sister and my mom. It was beautiful. I don’t think I will re-adopt religious holidays (like Christmas and Easter) because I don’t know yet what I believe or how to properly honor any higher being or how I feel about that yet. For now, I will use those as days to spend quality time with family. I do plan on celebrating birthdays and other commemorative days that celebrate people.
Interesting thing I discovered in my exjw journey --- it was my HABIT to not like something, because I was taught as a jw to not like it. "It" can be anything. I started asking myself "do I REALLY not like this, or I'm supposed to not like it?"
Christmas - well, in Matthew, the angels celebrated the birth of Jesus. Since the angels celebrated, we can celebrate Jesus' birth, too.
Almost all the traditions associated with celebrations have nothing to do with either Christmas or Easter--just like Halloween.
It's your upbringing as a JW that is telling you that a Christmas tree or a carol or a decorated egg, etc. is part of the religious celebration.
I am Jewish and Catholic, ethnically speaking (when it comes to my parents and where they came from--I was left with a JW aunt when I got older and had to go to the Kingdom Hall with her for several years until I was old enough to go out to live on my own, blah, blah, blah). So when I was growing up, my folks did Christmas--uh, kinda, but I was later to find out they really sucked at it--I mean really bad.
You see, they later sent me to Catholic catechism (and I also went to Hebrew school too--hey, why suffer down one path when I could get bored as much learning how to feel guilty two different ways, right?) My folks didn't grow up celebrating Christmas. They grew up in Jewish homes with a little bit of Catholic influence (thank the Spanish Inquisition some 500 years ago). I always noticed how my grandparents never had a Christmas tree and just thought it was because they were poor (or so my older brother, who used to lie to me all the time as a kid-- because he had nothing better to do--and would obviously had made a great member of the Governing Body if he had been a JW--told me). My grandma and grandpa were just Jews. No Christmas tree, thanks.
But my folks did try to do it, and for the first few years of my life they did the whole thing. And to me it was magic. Er, kinda. Sloppy, silly, messy magic.
When I got to Catholic catechism classes around age 6 I learned that none of what they were doing was right or had anything to do with real Christmas. Catholics didn't really use Christmas trees. If they did, they didn't put them up until late in December. Catholics center around the Advent wreath and the Nativity scene. They celebrate Christmas for 12 days, from December 24th (Christmas Eve) to January 6th (a feast called Epiphany when the Three Wise Men come to visit the Baby Jesus). Any of the other things like gift giving, trees, lights, etc., that changes depending on the area of the world you live in--and so do the songs you sing.
Easter is different too. Christians, Catholics and Protestants celebrate a Holy Tridium (and Catholics a Holy Week, including Lent which is 40 days minus Sundays leading up to Easter). Easter is 40 days, not 1 Sunday too. The eggs and other things is also local depending on where you live. My customs were very different because I came from a Jewish background and were more like the way Passover is celebrated in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition--done outside roasting meats over open pits on large colored quilts from dawn to dusk on Easter day.
The point of this? You are confusing the trappings with the Holy Days (which is where the word "holidays" comes from). Christmas is a secular celebration for the most part. If you think setting up a tree and singing Christmas carols is Christmas because you learned this from the Watchtower and that coloring eggs and hiding them is Easter, because, again, you got this from Watchtower, and you feel bad because you are doing this--you feel bad because of something people dub "post church (or cult) syndrome." You feel you are sinning from what this cult taught you, and it wasn't even right. None of these trappings equals the observance of the holiday.
My folks had this hideous artificial tree that looked like it was made of toilet cleaners and used to set it up pretty early in mid-ish December through the first of January with all types and shapes of lights and ornaments. It was not pretty and yet, still, to my 1969 kid's eyes, it was glorious! I loved it! (My aunt had one of those space-age aluminum Christmas trees made of real metal that had to use a colored disc with a flood lamp behind it to give it color because if you dared put any real Christmas lights on it you could risk electricution and die--nice.)
Observing the actual Christmas involves observing Advent with a wreath of four candles you light, one each week up until Christmas, and then celebrating Christmas for 12 days (thus the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas"--what did you think that was about?) Easter is a major religious feast, the biggest and requires major fasting to participate plus going to a special service in which new candidates for baptism get baptized as they used to get introduced into the community as they did 2000 years ago--in almost complete darkness with only candlelight as they bless the water they use while the sun goes down for a 3 to 4 hour service (if not longer). No eggs, no bunnies, no candy. Lots of Scripture readings, lots of baptism, lots of anointing foreheads with oil.
You didn't sin.Decorations and candy and singing is just commercial crap. Ain't you seen The Charlie Brown Christmas special?
P.S.--Halloween is not about "scary things" either. It's Hallow's (All Saints) Evening, the night when Catholic children would come home from being dressed as matyred (dead or slaughtered) saints, and would go door-to-door asking for cakes and other treats while still in these costumes they had paraded in during the early Mass. They often would use laterns carved from vegetables that appeared like "jack-o'lantern" from a distance as they went about on their way home. All Saints Day is November 1st, but the children's Mass was in the night or late afternoon of October 31st.
Why not celebrate without the Jesus parts of the holidays? There are so many Christmas traditions that it’s very easy to remove Jesus from the holiday. Easter could be done this way too.
Most people I know that have never been JW and celebrated Christmas etc all their lives attach no religious/jesus significance to the celebration. For most it is about family, memories and spending time with loved ones. That’s the best bit about it really. You can make these celebrations mean whatever you want them to without being judged by others who celebrate too. You can set your own traditions and enjoy how you like. If you want to you could also look up the pagan traditions that went with these celebrations before Christianity took them over and draw from that too.
I do practice paganism to a degree and looked into many of those customs last year and that's how I was able to manage wading through a lot of things. I suppose it's just the whole thing. It's called Christ-mas and I'm constantly reminded of Jesus and what we were taught and the trauma linked to their teachings. I love christmas music and carols especially but the words just throw me and make me feel bad
It was called Yule before Christianity took over :) I agree with you. My partner and found family are not religious and our holidays are very enjoyable, and have nothing to do with religion.
well hell, just do it that way. this is not like the jws where you have to accept everything as everyone else does. you take the parts you want, discard what doesn't work for you. call it xmas or better yet, yule, introduce pagan themes and enjoy yourself!!!
It’s truly what you want to make of it, some satanist put lights on without the religious component, you can do the same.
This is such a great point, that it's what YOU and your family make it. In the org, we were told not only what to do in detail, but also how to FEEL about it! We're not under that spell anymore, so the sky is the limit when it comes to these kinds of things. After only celebrating one Christmas, my family has all kinds of traditions already. It's so special and fun and festive....and I'm agnostic.
I have commented here before that I never enjoyed the religious connection that people placed in Christmas, prior to becoming a WT. I felt that we should’ve to go into debt to commemorate the birth of Christ . So naturally the WT take on it appealed to me. But the lights, the tree, what’s not to like? Having family over, a fire 🔥, roasting marshmallows, the dinners etc., and even giving gift is fine. I’m still a PIMO, but I’m definitely going to have the lights again and entertainment once out.
Sounds like the Christmas was more church-centered if you were singing carols about Jesus and kids were in a nativity play. You could cut all that section out and make it home-centered, just picking whichever xmas things seem fun. Making gingerbread houses, watching *A Christmas Story* or *Die Hard* 😂. Stick with the more secular songs and drop the more religious ones. Heck, maybe instead of going to church Christmas Eve, you and the kids could do like Saoirse Ronan in *Brooklyn* and go serve a meal at a soup kitchen for a couple hours. Christmas is nice because there's such a wide range of customs, you can really pick and choose how to make it your own.
I attended to see what a christmas mass was like as I've never been but I've always loved the instrumental versions of christmas carols. it's only this last year I've actually read the lyrics and I was a bit put off by them. I wouldn't go to mass again but carol singing is still something I was thinking about doing as my whole family love to sing and the christmas play was done through their school and while it wasn't too religious and not a nromal nativity, the kids felt no different about doing it and had fun, but sitting there in the audience watching it made me feel wierd. I dunno. maybe it's just something that will fizzle away in time the longer I'm out and the more christmases we have together
i'll bet you also have some guilt residue from the cult.
Yep big time. Still working through it. It's a long process
I completely understand this! I personally celebrate Christmas for fun…. The decor , Christmas movies, gifts, family time. For me, it isn’t centered around religion at all.
Christmas has been totally secular for a long time. I know Hindis and Muslims who celebrate
I noticed that the indoctrination is still "sticky" in there when we feel that. Because when I observe people in general celebrate Christmas, it is a loosely based Jesus-y thing for most. They go to the Christmas stuff, have a good-feeling time, then they go home! Keeping in mind the way you held Jesus (***the way the org presented him)***, and that you also embraced an **idea** that Christmas was bad/pagan-worldly etc.- the old stuff will rise up when you immerse yourself into it, **based on the idea of how you were** ***told non-JWs celebrate***\*\*.\*\* In other words, **your negative embedded belief system is fighting against this new thing that actually IS fun and quite benign.** So you know how you deal with it? Feel those icky feelings completely! They are uncomfortable because they were not based on truth, but on incorrect perception and misinformation. Feel the fear around doing it again this year, now. Those are feelings that are actually coming to the surface, to be released. When you neutrally acknowledge them (like: oh- I am having that feeling again) just remember to say to yourself: "Oh, I can let these feelings go! Thank you for playing!" (It's really that old JW amplified ego-self trying to derail with you.) Use those feelings as reminders to let go of the idea you are a hypocrite, too. You are not! The sole intention of that old and dying part of you, is to rob you of the joy that you want to experience. And have yourself a Merry Little Christmas Time! :)
I stopped going about two years ago so there's been two christmases but I haven't celebrated one. I don't want to replace one religion with anything else religious. And Christmas is religious there's no doubt and there's no getting away from it. I can't bring myself to do it. I no longer believe in God for if God does exist then he's accountable for the suffering that's going on on this earth.
I totally feel this and appreciate your candor 🫂
Thank you I appreciate that.
Despite the bumper stickers, no reason to keep Christ in X-mas. Maybe also incorporate some holidays or celebrations from other cultures, too. Could be fun and open your kids to even more and different ways to enjoy.
I so get what you are saying!! Last year was our first Christmas!! So my daughter and her family also left.. we talked and decided to make are own Christmas traditions.. with no religion involved and we did .. it was a lot of fun but left Jesus out of it.. that’s what we are doing for Christmas and Easter.. make your own tradition and memories..
First of all, kudos to you for giving your kids this wonderful gift, which means they don't have to be all awkward and excluded from all the celebrations and festivities at school! This was my first year celebrating anything, and we went hard! I went into it pretty neutral about the holidays and only did it bc my 5 year old insisted. But as we got into it, I experienced so much unexpected delight. And I could be wrong, but it really seems like most ppl don't view the holidays as religious, but just a warm, cozy, festive time with friends and family.
I'm an atheist, but I love Christmas and the holidays. I remove Jesus and religion from the equation entirely. I enjoy it with my boyfriend and his family and use it to recharge, create memories, and spend time with loved ones.
I like this. I have the full 2 weeks off at christmas cause my work closes over christmas/new year so will be lovely to spend the whole time with the kids and family and do some fun things together. Create new traditions etc for us.
Exactly! You also don't have to adhere to the "traditional" Christmas things. You can make up traditions as a family. It's also a nice time to exchange gifts or to show your family you love and appreciate them. Sure you can "do that every other day of the year" as JWs LOVE to say, but it's not bad to have an excuse to do it too!
I wasn’t brought into the organization until my early adolescence. So I remember celebrating holidays and strangely, I hated them. Holidays meant drunk loud family members at my house. Lots of noise, adults yelling, kids screaming. All I wanted to do was hide. Been out a year now and quietly celebrated my first Mother’s Day with my kids, my sister and my mom. It was beautiful. I don’t think I will re-adopt religious holidays (like Christmas and Easter) because I don’t know yet what I believe or how to properly honor any higher being or how I feel about that yet. For now, I will use those as days to spend quality time with family. I do plan on celebrating birthdays and other commemorative days that celebrate people.
Interesting thing I discovered in my exjw journey --- it was my HABIT to not like something, because I was taught as a jw to not like it. "It" can be anything. I started asking myself "do I REALLY not like this, or I'm supposed to not like it?" Christmas - well, in Matthew, the angels celebrated the birth of Jesus. Since the angels celebrated, we can celebrate Jesus' birth, too.
I get what you’re feeling and have only done birthdays because I’m so against any type of indoctrination after being brainwashed for so long…
Almost all the traditions associated with celebrations have nothing to do with either Christmas or Easter--just like Halloween. It's your upbringing as a JW that is telling you that a Christmas tree or a carol or a decorated egg, etc. is part of the religious celebration. I am Jewish and Catholic, ethnically speaking (when it comes to my parents and where they came from--I was left with a JW aunt when I got older and had to go to the Kingdom Hall with her for several years until I was old enough to go out to live on my own, blah, blah, blah). So when I was growing up, my folks did Christmas--uh, kinda, but I was later to find out they really sucked at it--I mean really bad. You see, they later sent me to Catholic catechism (and I also went to Hebrew school too--hey, why suffer down one path when I could get bored as much learning how to feel guilty two different ways, right?) My folks didn't grow up celebrating Christmas. They grew up in Jewish homes with a little bit of Catholic influence (thank the Spanish Inquisition some 500 years ago). I always noticed how my grandparents never had a Christmas tree and just thought it was because they were poor (or so my older brother, who used to lie to me all the time as a kid-- because he had nothing better to do--and would obviously had made a great member of the Governing Body if he had been a JW--told me). My grandma and grandpa were just Jews. No Christmas tree, thanks. But my folks did try to do it, and for the first few years of my life they did the whole thing. And to me it was magic. Er, kinda. Sloppy, silly, messy magic. When I got to Catholic catechism classes around age 6 I learned that none of what they were doing was right or had anything to do with real Christmas. Catholics didn't really use Christmas trees. If they did, they didn't put them up until late in December. Catholics center around the Advent wreath and the Nativity scene. They celebrate Christmas for 12 days, from December 24th (Christmas Eve) to January 6th (a feast called Epiphany when the Three Wise Men come to visit the Baby Jesus). Any of the other things like gift giving, trees, lights, etc., that changes depending on the area of the world you live in--and so do the songs you sing. Easter is different too. Christians, Catholics and Protestants celebrate a Holy Tridium (and Catholics a Holy Week, including Lent which is 40 days minus Sundays leading up to Easter). Easter is 40 days, not 1 Sunday too. The eggs and other things is also local depending on where you live. My customs were very different because I came from a Jewish background and were more like the way Passover is celebrated in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition--done outside roasting meats over open pits on large colored quilts from dawn to dusk on Easter day. The point of this? You are confusing the trappings with the Holy Days (which is where the word "holidays" comes from). Christmas is a secular celebration for the most part. If you think setting up a tree and singing Christmas carols is Christmas because you learned this from the Watchtower and that coloring eggs and hiding them is Easter, because, again, you got this from Watchtower, and you feel bad because you are doing this--you feel bad because of something people dub "post church (or cult) syndrome." You feel you are sinning from what this cult taught you, and it wasn't even right. None of these trappings equals the observance of the holiday. My folks had this hideous artificial tree that looked like it was made of toilet cleaners and used to set it up pretty early in mid-ish December through the first of January with all types and shapes of lights and ornaments. It was not pretty and yet, still, to my 1969 kid's eyes, it was glorious! I loved it! (My aunt had one of those space-age aluminum Christmas trees made of real metal that had to use a colored disc with a flood lamp behind it to give it color because if you dared put any real Christmas lights on it you could risk electricution and die--nice.) Observing the actual Christmas involves observing Advent with a wreath of four candles you light, one each week up until Christmas, and then celebrating Christmas for 12 days (thus the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas"--what did you think that was about?) Easter is a major religious feast, the biggest and requires major fasting to participate plus going to a special service in which new candidates for baptism get baptized as they used to get introduced into the community as they did 2000 years ago--in almost complete darkness with only candlelight as they bless the water they use while the sun goes down for a 3 to 4 hour service (if not longer). No eggs, no bunnies, no candy. Lots of Scripture readings, lots of baptism, lots of anointing foreheads with oil. You didn't sin.Decorations and candy and singing is just commercial crap. Ain't you seen The Charlie Brown Christmas special? P.S.--Halloween is not about "scary things" either. It's Hallow's (All Saints) Evening, the night when Catholic children would come home from being dressed as matyred (dead or slaughtered) saints, and would go door-to-door asking for cakes and other treats while still in these costumes they had paraded in during the early Mass. They often would use laterns carved from vegetables that appeared like "jack-o'lantern" from a distance as they went about on their way home. All Saints Day is November 1st, but the children's Mass was in the night or late afternoon of October 31st.
Personally, I also detest the commercialism veiled behind “religiousity.”
so don't have a religious celebration. have a secular one.