Holidays and Celebrations The fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not participate in most holiday observances and other celebrations can be somewhat perplexing to a teacher. We hope the following helps you to understand why we take the matter so seriously. Perhaps to a greater extent than you may have realized, many holidays and the customs associated with them have a non-Christian religious ...
Christmas lights: According to The Encyclopedia of Religion, Europeans decorated their homes “with lights and evergreens of all kinds” to celebrate the winter solstice and to combat evil spirits. Mistletoe, holly: “The Druids ascribed magical properties to the mistletoe in particular.
Some were sentimental, saying Christmas is a family time, a time for children, and so on. Others were humanistic, seeing Christmas as a time to celebrate love for one’s fellow man, the spirit of giving, and that sort of thing. Others were crassly hedonistic, viewing Christmas as just another excuse to party.
Familiar scene of Christmas is depicted so commonly by artists who design Christmas cards, and most people get their understanding of Christmas from Christmas cards and not from Scripture. There are some very familiar and accurate understandings. Obviously, Joseph and Mary and the Baby, and the shepherds; pretty clear to all of us just exactly who they were. We understand the shepherd were in ...
If you’re like me, you have heard the world’s comments and evaluations of this time of the year. And one of the phrases that you hear a lot is “the Christmas spirit.” We need to have “the Christmas spirit.” And of course, I began to think about that, being somewhat analytical. Just what is the Christmas spirit? And I suppose there are a lot of potential answers to that question. To ...
