Holiday season doesn’t mean anything to me. Or, rather, it doesn’t mean anything sweet, fun, cozy. It doesn’t mean family and warm fires, it doesn’t mean big meals and naps in front of football games on the TV with your extended family coming and going through the house.
It doesn’t mean trees and lights, smells of cinnamon and roasted squash, it doesn’t mean gifts and cards and fellowship, it doesn’t mean anything good.
What the holidays (and yes, all of them) mean to me is exclusion.
Being shut out of tradition, family, and building any sort of good memories around holidays is all but impossible once you are older and have left the Jehovah’s Witness cult. Along with that, is a very real and vicious feeling of being “other”. In every way it was reiterated. You’re not of this world. The traditions will just separate you from the truth and most of all will alienate you from God.
As much as “the world” was surrounded by reminders of the reason for the season, I was constantly only reminded of how very different and alone I truly was.
In the classrooms as a little child I had to refuse to do any coloring pages or crossword puzzles that had anything to do with holidays or birthdays. The teachers had to go out of their way to find me options to work on with the class that included me in the activity, but of course I’d be sitting there, feeling separate from all the Xmas puzzles on the pages around me on every desk, and the children doing them, while I was coloring some random holiday-neutral worksheet. It was demonstrated with no doubt whatsoever that I was never part of the group. I’d have to duck around tinsel and garlands to get to my plain desk, screaming “OTHER HERE!!! LOOK!! OTHER!!!”, my naked chair and table next to everyone else’s decked out in holiday cheer. When the classroom holiday party and Secret Santa gift handout happened, I’d be sent into my chair in the hallway, separated by a closed door, listening to the joy and cheers and squeals of delight coming through the wood, scribbling my math problems in pencil and trying not to hear them. I’d be called in after the party, walk to my empty desk, surrounded by classmates with their new gifts, trying very hard to hide my envy at seeing the wished-for toys and pretty things, knowing they weren’t ever going to be for me.
In high school in choir class I lost my voice every holiday season, for I wasn’t able to join with the caroling, as they were religious or centered around holiday traditions that I wasn’t allowed to take part in. An entire two or three months every year where I wasn’t allowed to sing my soprano lines. Every classroom I’d sit to the left of the choir, standing on their platforms as I should have been, and try not to hear and memorize every word of every song they sang. My ears would follow the music, my throat would change with the notes, but my mouth remained silent as I bent over my homework from Biology class and tried to not hear it. If walkmans were available to my poor family I would have brought one to listen to other music and block out the singing. But of course that wasn’t possible.
None of the holiday decorations in the hallways and classrooms and cafeteria were there for me, and instead of sitting there and fielding the constant (CONSTANT) intrusive questions from my classmates, I’d go hide in the library and avoid them. My days were full of music, images, and joy of my peers, all restricted from me, and if I were to take any pleasure in any of these things I was forbidden from, I’d feel I’d failed God and he hated me.
It followed me everywhere. Even the grocery stores sang sonnets and holiday cheer I wasn’t allowed to be a part of. It was heavy, and weighed on my little shoulders, the entire world showed me only happiness and joy, and I was supposed to look at it as wrong, unacceptable, and completely forbidden. My peers would chatter to one another about the gifts they got, I’d overhear it coming back from the holidays. The students would be encouraged by the teacher in class to share their favorite holiday tradition. It would come to my turn, and I’d have none to share. The kids around me would shift in their seats, uncomfortable with this “other” among them. They’d share which gift was their favorite this year. My turn, nothing. They’d tell about the big yummy meals their family prepared. I got to share that we treat the day as any other, and had no special big dinners or Christmas lunches. We ate beans and cornbread while they had a buffet of choices, and they couldn’t believe that I didn’t get anything different for the season. “REALLY?!?! You did NOTHING?!?! WHY?!?!?!” Followed by my having to explain for the eleventy billionth time that I didn’t take part, and why.
It wouldn’t end there, either. Kids would come to me after/between classes and ask me for an explanation, and either get offended and angry with me or overwhelmingly sad. I had to carry that for them, and tell them I didn’t care, it didn’t matter, it was just a day, when inside I was just explaining another reason for them to distance me, and I had no control over it.
The holidays for you have been a whirlwind of good memories, favorite moments, fireplaces and mittens and stockings and good food and warmth and new books to read, new toys to play with, grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins, sharing love and companionship.
For me the holidays are sadness, other-ness, anger, a reminder multiple times a year how much I am NOT like the world, because the choice was removed from me. And I believed it. I truly did. All the suffering and misery were just part of being a JW kid growing up in a small Texas town, and I wasn’t alone. But it FELT like I was. In every sense of the word. It would have been different, perhaps, if there were other JW kids in class to commiserate with. The one I had was pulled out in second grade, and when she was gone I had to be strong, be a good example, prove that the Truth was my own, show my sister how it’s done. Alone as an eight year old who was forcefully shown how different she was to her classmates by a vicious second grade teacher…my peers didn’t need any more reasons to avoid me except when they were being cruel and pursuing me all over the playground.
We’d go out to visit my grandparents at their airport, Bates Field, on holiday breaks from school…of course we did, it’s the only time we had. My parents did they best they could with what they were given. They probably didn’t realize how much it hurt. I didn’t either until I was an adult.
Thing is, the cult didn’t just steal those possible happy moments with our families. They stole our bond too. Our “worldly” family, as we had no extended family that were “in the truth” as JWs, would of course go about building traditions they treasured since they were children. They’d make fruit cake, drink eggnog with whiskey, pass around little gifts the night before Christmas, then have the big gift opening in the morning. I was allowed to have some of the treats, as long as I knew with no doubt that it was just food, just a cookie, not a gingerbread man steeped in tradition.
We’d go to bed Christmas Eve, us kiddos, the cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and in a house full of anticipation and excitement there were four of us who felt nothing but dread. I’d wake to happy laughs and cheers, smells of the tree, and I’d listen from the room we slept in, because we weren’t allowed to join them. I’d sit and read, and not be able to go see my family all opening gifts, handing them out, laughing, crying with joy. Every crinkle of wrapping paper reached me in my ever-isolation, as I tried to concentrate on the book in front of me and not hear them. I remember peeking around the corner to see, many times, and I’d watch the bright moments, the happy faces, the love and family hugs that I was excluded from having. I’d smile, because I was glad they were happy. I’d walk back to my pallet on the floor, and open my novel up with tears in my eyes. I didn’t care about the gifts, I got them all year, gave them all year too, as long as they weren’t associated with a holiday or birthday that was okay.
Gifts weren’t the point. For me it was the exclusion from my family that was hardest. Not being able to build traditions with them, memories that bond, moments to look back on together and chat about with the people I shared them with. Those were stolen from me. I wasn’t allowed to build a bond with my extended “worldly” family, because it was hammered in my mind repeatedly that they would die in Armageddon and they didn’t matter unless they were JWs too. Building anything with them was pointless, as my real family was my congregation, and all of the brothers and sisters within. THEY were the ones I’d be going through eternity with in paradise earth. So they’re the ones to look to. The rest didn’t matter.
Except to me they DID matter. More than they realize even now. And I have no relationship with any of them, even as someone who left the cult more than ten years ago. I’m afloat without my extended family, and my parents and sister are still JWs, which means I don’t have them either. As someone who has disassociated, as someone who they see as an apostate, I’m worse to them than anyone who has never known the “truth”. Because I knew it, I got baptized at the age of sixteen, and I still chose to leave it. I’m worse than any unbeliever. So I don’t have them either. I don’t have family, unless I make it now.
The joy of missing out on Christmas with my family didn’t end after the frenzy of gift-giving. I remember multiple times my family members would feel bad for my little sister and I and give my parents a small gift for us to open later, after Christmas day was over. Because it was okay, if it wasn’t a Christmas gift, right? They’d pack it in the back of the car with our luggage, and we’d do our hugs, then get in the car and head home, eight hours away. The drive home was always in silence for the first few hours on the road, as we processed and worked through the “holiday” visit, each of performing balancing acts in our own minds. The easiest thing was to just put the thoughts away, as I had to put away any desire to take part in the festivities, choke it back until it was bitter in the back of my throat. I tasted that bitterness from October through January, every year of my life. I still do, even after leaving the cult, because even if you make a life of your own they’re still a part of your every memory, every instinct, every recollection as you grow older year by year.
All the good wishes given by coworkers, family, even the cashier at the grocery store, had to be thanked in a way that didn’t offend God. “Happy Holidays!” with “Thank you” and never “You, too!” “Merry Christmas” with another “Thank you”, and silence, turning me into the rude person that refused to wish it back. The birthday and Christmas cards sent by family members slowly died off as they saw you never sent one to them in return. All those cards? Trashed, immediately, without opening. Because opening them and accepting what’s inside made us part of the world and celebrating the event they were sent for. We couldn’t do such things. Eventually they all stopped. I haven’t gotten one of those from family in over three decades, not because they don’t care, but because they just don’t think of me when doing such things anymore. I don’t come to my family’s mind, I’m not a part of it, just as I’m not part of the world, no longer part of my immediate family, and no longer part of a congregation.
All this season is to me is a reminder of the family I wasn’t allowed to be a part of. A reminder of the family I lost. Each birthday, each calendar-marked event, is spent as if it was any other day. It’s a bonus day off in which I have to avoid the holiday movies and shows that are EVERYWHERE I look. I keep the lights down and occupy myself with other things, I stay home because everything is closed, I return well-wishes (now I do, as I can, unlike my first thirty years of life), but I don’t do as you do. And all over the country, all over this world, are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of former JWs who also have to find ways to change this annual reminder of “otherness” into something completely opposite.
And thank you. Thank you to those who really try to reach out this time of year. It’s always a battle in my mind, always awkward on my side, but I feel your love. I feel the inclusiveness. I just don’t feel it as you do. So if I seem detached, please remember all of the former Jehovah’s Witnesses that are so used to being in pain this season, and remind them that they aren’t alone. Bring me in closer, instead of pushing me away. Just please don’t be offended if it’s not the same as with others who grew up celebrating. Because to us it’s never normal, and we don’t have the happy memories this time of year that you do.
A Burd in Flight 