Birthdays and Jehovah’s Witnesses

Happy Birthday! That’s a phrase most people have heard, hopefully a lot in their lives. If you grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, it’s very likely no one told you Happy Birthday. It’s well known that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays. To them it’s an apostate offense, paganism, evil, having a slice of birth cake, you mind as well be worshiping the devil.

This is serious business for the Jehovah’s Witness. They even have children’s cartoons explaining why Jehovah is happy when you avoid such celebrations. Everything is pagan, from the cake, candles, the song, the fact that you recognize it, all pagan. They claim this is all laid out in the Bible, accurate knowledge dispensed from God’s Channel to his people.

Are they right? Not even close, and what’s happening is actually a masked hypocrisy. They make statements and create rules of what categorizes pagan activity, yet members of the religion break these daily in other activities. They’ve singled out birthdays while allowing similar behavior. I know that seems harsh, but as we tear down the reasoning here you’ll see for yourself. As we break this down, remember Jehovah’s Witnesses say we should avoid all pagan practices, like birthdays, if we want to survive the end of the world, and make God happy. Number 1

Birthday celebrations have pagan roots.

Let’s be honest, pagan’s celebrated their birthdays. To which I’ll bluntly respond, so what. They’d have cakes of flour, nuts and honey and such. The knee jerk reaction is creating a link, but this is faulty thinking. There is a lot of misinformation about the origins of birthdays. There’s no official documentation, so it’s easy for lies to spread. It is true birthdays in the last several centuries were mostly a peasant tradition, and most likely grew out of an appreciation of life, due to heavy the high rate of death among children. While the birthday celebrations of centuries ago did have heavy religions undertones, the parties in homes today, have no connection to the ancient practice.

Even if pagan’s were the first to celebrate a birthday with a cake, that means nothing. Almost everything we do in the modern day, some pagans did it first. But there isn’t a connecting path or tradition that’s passed down from the Egyptians or some other culture.

Think about this, Football( Soccer) began in 1860’s in England. It’s just a sport, not religious at all, (depends on who you ask) well for the most part. Interesting fact, the ancient Mayans had a similar game hundreds of years prior. There was a field, a ball, two teams, and they used only certain body parts. However, the Mayan sport was religious in nature, dare I say pagan. You’d be fool to avoid soccer over it’s “pagan roots”, which would just amount to someone flaunting their moral superiority. Sure there are similarities between the sports, but these come from completely different cultures, times, and locations. Many cultures have sports, and having a party with sweets on the anniversary of a birth, is something that forms naturally, they’re pretty simple.

The Cake Pagan?

Desert of all types have been around a long while, among all cultures. They’ve always been for a special event, because it tastes good. No one hosts a party with lima beans and turnips. Birthday cakes started to pop up around the 16th century. They were sold in German markets to celebrate the child’s birthday. (Apparently kids like sweets, who knew? )

What’s usually presented is a logical fallacy of analogy If the pagans created a special food, with a certain shape, flavor or topping, and we copied that today, there might be an argument. However, every culture in the planet has sweets. Cakes are one of the most basic foods to create, and an easy go to for sweets. Almost every cultures drank red wine, but we don’t ignore the Lord’s supper because some pagan drank red wine to honor his god three thousand years ago. Cakes are simple, and having them for a small celebration for a child, is obvious and natural.

Misinformation says it comes from Kinderfeste, a German celebration of a child’s birthday. This isn’t true. Kinderfeste, or Child’s festival, was just that, a party for all children. It happened once a year, not for an individual child, but all the kids.

The Candles Pagan?

Let me shed some light on these candles. They’ve always been used by every culture from lighting their homes to honoring their god’s. Candles, seeing in the dark before the light bulb was invented. The origins of candles in recent times is unknown. They’ll those claiming it was to ward of spirits but there is no evidence for that. What seems to be the case, candles represented the light of life, something precious, like children, worthy of celebration.

The candle on cakes didn’t become popular until the 1800’s. The first documented case comes from 1746 from Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf who had a party with a candle for each year. Probably because he did it as a child. The reasons why, no one knows. Therefore, if someone is making a claim about their pagan origin, there had better be some documented evidence. What you’ll find is a lot of assumptions, but that’s where it ends. The candles, like modern birthdays themselves, rose out of tradition among the commoners. Since there is no foundation, people can apply whatever meaning they want to the candles, whether age, joy, light, or simple imagination. Less we forgot, they are for children.

How the Jehovah’s Witness will react.

As I’ve established, there is no link between the modern birthday and the pagan birthdays of centuries ago. Jehovah’s Witnesses will disagree, and claim we should avoid them, even if there is a small root. However, this is where the hypocrisy beings. Below is an quote from the Watchtower, however, I’ve swapped out “wedding rings” and added “Birthdays” instead.

As you see, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have no issues with wedding rings. Their reasoning on this is sound, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Condemning people for activity with apparent evil roots, all while wearing a gold band, which actually originates from mythology, this is the very definition of hypocrisy.

Early Christians did not celebrate birthdays.

Many problems with this argument, mainly why would they? It wasn’t part of their culture, as far as we know, and the birthday party is not a religious act. Therefore, why would the Bible mention it? Believers today are involved in lots of activities that the church didn’t practice, but I’ll touch on that later in the article. Witnesses know this, so you need to go outside the Bible to see how the early church behaved. The evidence used by the Encyclopedia and others is an unverified assumption. The mention of birthdays by early Christian sources is very sparse. And really only comes from early church father Origen of Alexandria. He writes in his homily on Leviticus VIII, that

Seems pretty clear, however the context needs to be read. Origin is speaking on the Roman celebration in which emperors would have grand festivals and parties, for themselves. They thought themselves god’s, and the anniversary of their birth was pretty much a holiday. The hubris and egocentric behavior was obvious. Origen makes some good points, but is basically saying, “the day you were born was the day you entered into sin, no Christian should celebrate that.” I understand were he’s coming from, but Origen goes even farther in the, hate the day of your birth talk. He quotes Jeremiah saying “Cursed be the day in which I was born, and the night in which they said, behold a male child.” So even announcing births is wrong? That’s a bit harsh. The Bible says children aren’t to be seen as curses, but blessings.

I don’t think origin is suggesting we hate birth. His message is meant to be counter-cultural, not promoting self hatred, but self-awareness. He’s telling the audience, we’re all rebels, born into the world of sin, the celebration of self should be frowned upon. I wholeheartedly agree, which is why you don’t typically throw a party for yourself. A five year old isn’t demanding a festival and worship in his honor, he just wants to hang out with friends and family and eat ice cream until he passes out. The parties Origen spoke of, and what are practiced today, are not the same thing. You can recognize you’re a sinner in need of grace, while at the same time cherishing the gift of children God gave you.

If Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to take Origen as literal and authoritative, why are they having baby showers? I know for a fact showers are a big deal among the Jehovah’s Witness community, and there’s nothing forbidden about them. But didn’t Origen said we need to curse the day we were born? Are they not celebrating the coming of a new enemy of God? ( As their Governing Body Stephen Lett called children) Seems to be, celebrating the pre-birth is good, the anniversary post-birth is evil. Not looking good for consistency.

The only commemoration the death of Jesus.

At no point did Jesus ever say, his death is the only commemoration Christians are to keep. Again, nowhere in Luke 22 or Matthew 26, is Jesus making a blanket rule for all celebrations. It is simply not there. Jehovah Witnesses expose themselves yet again, as not practicing what they preach. Plainly put, they celebrate marriage anniversaries. That is a commemoration. Yet they informed their members, as an absolute rule, the only commemoration Christians are to keep was about the death of Jesus. From their own writings, anniversaries are celebrations. We don’t see the early church practicing this, or the apostles, and it’s not in the Bible anywhere. So by their standards, Jesus didn’t authorize such a celebration. This is double speak, and contradictory behavior, also called hypocrisy.

The Bible never refers to a servant of God celebrating a birthday.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, who cares? This is an argument you can create with anything. Example, “Going to watch a play is pagan, avoid doing so, the Bible never refers to a servant of God seeing a play.” First, how would anyone know this? Since we don’t have an instance of a servant seeing a show, therefore it’s wrong? We don’t know what kind of activities those in the church participated in during their day to day. I’m sure they had their own traditions and celebrations, and we don’t know, because it’s not relevant to our salvation. There’s much of daily life that the Bible never mentions. You don’t see servants of God using the bathroom, taking showers, having pets like cats or dogs. Witnesses are allowed all those, and the Bible never refers to them. The organization is just picking and choosing. I don’t need to tell you what Christ’s attitude was towards this type of behavior.

If Jehovah’s Witnesses were consistent, there would be a lot more restrictions on their practices. But there aren’t, because they want to enjoy life. This is a way for them to point to a common festivity and give an illusion to moral superiority.

Birthdays in the Bible are full of death

A common response among Jehovah’s Witnesses is citing Herod and Pharaoh. They assumption goes something like this “Everything that in the Bible is there for a reason. It tells us about good people so that we can copy them. And it tells us about bad people so that we will not do what they did. The Bible tells about just two birthday parties, and both were bad.” No! That’s is an association fallacy. Just because these men did something bad on their birthday, doesn’t mean my eating ice cream cake in late July is sinful. I would ask a witness. “Have you ever picked fruit from a tree? Well, you’re evil! Whenever the Bible mentions fruit picking, something bad happens, really bad. You must avoid this practice you fruit picking pagan.”

The real Truth

A birthday celebration today, is an act of love. We’re happy the person in our lives and that God is his mercy gave us another year with your presence. It’s a celebration of life, another go around the sun, growing up, hopefully maturing and bringing joy to those around you. That’s worthy of some cake and ice cream. The Bible reminds us in 1 Corinthians 16:14, to “Let all that you do be done in love.”

It’s also worth mentioning, In Job 1:4 we read this.

We don’t know exactly what they were referring to, when is reads “His day”. This could have been a birthday, or a day set by each Son. Though it was not a celebration that coincided with any feast that was set by the Law. God didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

Any behavior not explicitly listed in the Bible must be tested to see if it violates God’s law, which Jesus breaks down in Matthew 22:37-40 loving God, and loving people. A parent tells their five year old. I love you, five years ago today you were born, it was the happiest day of my life, I’m so glad God gifted you to me. Here, I made you a cake, your favorite flavor, because I love you, also, a present I bought just for you. These candles represent each year you’ve been a light in our lives. I pray God gives us many more. It’s hard having a problem with that.

There point here, you don’t have to celebrate a birthday if you don’t want to. It’s not a sin to abstain, nor is it to participate. To claim that only “true Christians” would avoid them, is being dishonest with history, purposely inconsistent in reasoning, and downright insincere. Jehovah’s Witness leaders ban these in order to isolate members, reinforce self-righteousness and manage every activity of their followers.

Their invented doctrine is meant for control, it’s that simple. It’s designed to throttle love, and stunt the natural affections for others, all to keep people in line an obedient. This is all counter to the message of the Bible.

I understand this might be a painful topic for many Ex-JW’s. There’s too many stories of kids being left out of class parties or not invited to birthdays. Bad people hurt people, and the leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses are that, bad people. This isn’t what God intended, and he showed his love by humbling himself, and dying for the sins of man. Even though we didn’t deserve it, he showered us with mercy, poured out for all those who call him Lord and savior. Because of what he did, paying our debt, we love as he did, and we can express that love in many ways. That includes using deserts and presents on someone’s day of birth. Real faith comes from hearing and trusting in the good news of salvation, not obeying the hypocritical rules of charlatans. For the Christian, go love, because you’ve been loved. Celebrate and enjoy all types of anniversaries, God gave you, but remember, His grace is the best gift we could ever receive, it’s not just the cake, it’s also the icing.