The holidays were in full swing as my teacher strolled up and down each aisle complimenting a bunch of first graders on their crappy construction paper Christmas trees. As one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Christmas, so I clumped a handful of cotton balls into the shape of a snowman. A borderline heretic, I then slipped my glue-encrusted fingers through a random pair of craft scissors and carved out the shape of an Evergreen. “Aren’t you going to decorate your tree?”, asked Ms. Ridinger, hovered over my desk. No, I responded, instantly riddled with guilt. I just want to admire its natural beauty.
If I ever see a child sitting in the mulch on a sunny day, and this child tells me they don’t want to swing on the swing, or slide down the slide, they ‘just want to admire the architecture’, I’m going to hunt his mother for meat. It’s not that I’m against a budding Frank Lloyd Wright, or even a future horticulturalist. But, a child’s instinct is to play and explore, and my teacher was entirely justified in the silent eye-roll I guarantee she did in her heart. Who the hell are this kid’s parents, and why don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate Christmas?
After bringing my bare, not-Christmas tree home, my mother sat me down to explain why we refrain from engaging in the festivities. She placed a glass of water in front of me. “Look at this clean glass of water,” she said. “Now, imagine I put a teensy, weensy drop of poop in it.” I waited for the inevitable punchline that was going to teach me why I can’t have a normal childhood. “Most of the water looks clean, but that one little drop contaminated the whole glass.” Christmas might look beautiful and harmless with its twinkle lights and presents, she reasoned, but its origins are tainted by pagan traditions.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are technically not wrong about Christmas. The Romans co-opted Christ’s birth as an excuse to get wasted during the winter solstice, and today, we watch Will Ferrell on December 25th while exchanging material goods we most likely don’t need. And, if our recent decade of marinating in extreme political correctness taught us anything, it’s that you’ll be put before a firing squad before you brazenly assume someone celebrates Christmas, as opposed to Hanukkah or Ramadan, or worships their garden gnome. But, there’s a problem with my mother’s logic. When I performed this same purity test to trace the origins of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I found my fair share of shit: thousands of cases of child sexual abuse that were never reported to law enforcement. Charles Taze Russell’s fascination with the occult. The Watchtower Organization’s ties to the United Nations. The fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrated Christmas even after claiming they were cleansed from pagan practices in 1919*. The math wasn’t mathing.
“Would you want to drink the water after you knew poop was in it? Eww,” she made a yucky face, satisfied with her argument but blind to her own hypocrisy. I could ask my mother the same question. Would you want to align yourself with a group that has sketchy roots and a history of systematically abusing the most innocent among you? “If we don’t stay faithful to Jehovah,” she warned, “we could lose our life.”
Drink up, Ma. I have a tree to decorate.
*For more info about Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrating Christmas, check out JWFacts.