ExJW Quiet Activism: The Annual Tree Sacrifice

How many trees die for the Christmas celebrations each year? Christmas is almost a global celebration in this day and age, it's not just in Western culture but everywhere since it means corporations make a lot of money with making it almost a law that everyone celebrate Christmas and start buying tons of products and get them gift wrapped and placed under the mandatory Christmas tree each year.

Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness (JW), I only experienced Christmas when we lived near my "worldly" paternal grandparents who were devout Catholics, and Christmas meant midnight mass and having a devotion and reverence to Jesus Christ who died for all of us, that we may have everlasting life in a paradise. My grandparents had a beautiful large Christmas tree in their home that filled an entire corner of the living room where all the presents under that tree were mine.

The adults didn't exchange gifts but they had lots of food and wine and I still have a memory of my grandfather giving me a taste of whiskey in a tiny glass. I always had a love of horses from birth and one year I have a particular memory of a gift that was a metal truck horse trailer filled with plastic horses, an arena I pieced together and tiny bales of hay. When we left the celebration and got back home, my present was placed in a closet and I never played with it again. My mother told me it was off limits and to not take it out of the box. For kids, time really means nothing so I don't know how long it was after that Christmas with my grandparents that we packed up and moved away from them and somehow that gift they gave me didn't make it into our boxes for the movers.

Since we were now alone without any worldly influences from non-JW family members, we were fully engulfed in the JW congregation we attended and had no friends or contact with any non-JW on a personal level. Any outsider was treated with cold detachment and politeness, but nothing else. Christmases came and went as I wondered if we would ever have a big Christmas tree in our home like my grandparents had. I never asked my parents about it, I just waited and wondered.

Actual photo of the annual Christmas tree
display at Union Square in San Francisco
that I remember seeing as a child.

My parents liked road trips to San Francisco since we lived in the country and I saw the biggest Christmas tree imaginable in a department store. The storefront was all glass leading up to the top floor, it was all open so you could see all the floors and the Christmas tree was on the ground floor reaching up to the top. I never saw anything more beautiful in my life. I told my mom I wanted to see it from the top and my mother said no, we don't celebrate Christmas. My father said nothing as we walked past the storefront and for some reason, it caused me deep embarrassment that I asked to see the tree top, since I wanted to see all the decorations and what was on the top of the tree. I don't know why I had that reaction but I felt cut to the heart. My mother's response was so cold and mean, like I had said something horrible that other people could hear.

Neiman Marcus, San Francisco, CA.

Now that I have left the JW organization, I have never had a Christmas tree in my own home. I still feel a detachment from the celebration. I don't mind that other people celebrate it and string lights around their homes, it can be very pretty, but I don't care about it. I do get a bit troubled by all the trees that are cut down for the holiday and then are thrown in the garbage like trash. I feel that people have no respect for nature and this annual tree sacrifice should stop, but then I stop and think, why? Why do I feel so upset about that? Why do I feel sorry for the trees? They are cut down and dragged into homes and then dumped in the street or in garbage bins like they were never living, beautiful things.

I find it extremely humorous when I read about people so devoted to their non-belief in God, they believe in nothing, no Higher Power, no Grand Creator, nothing, not even in any sort of afterlife, yet some go nuts if they can't have that Christmas tree in their home whether they have JW family members or not who would object to such a display. Even some ex-JWs who have left God behind race out and buy that Christmas tree. I consider myself a spiritual person and do believe in a Creator of all this but not of the Christian God of the Bible, however, Christmas holds no special meaning for me, I can take it or leave it.

But then I wonder, well, I guess the Christians have adopted this time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ and it's really only a secular holiday to get you to separate your hard earned cash from your wallet and has little if anything to do with spirituality. So there are always two sides to every coin.

What am I doing this year? No, I still do not want a Christmas tree in my home, not even a small one, it holds no value or meaning of anything to me. It's just a tree sitting in my house that I have to clean up and haul it outside to be picked up by the garbage men come the New Year. I do enjoy the colors of the season, scented candles, and gathering with friends or taking a long trip to the snow and renting a cabin and enjoying hiking and sitting by the fireplace at night.

I like this time of the year with the Winter coming and I cherish the memories I have of my paternal grandparents and of their honest and sincere kindness and religious devotion at Christmas and going to mass. I remember kneeling with my grandmother at her altar in her home with small porcelain idols of the Virgin Mary and tiny religious paintings of the Christ, as she taught me how to pray on the rosary with each bead a separate prayer and her love remains a strong memory that makes me smile to this day.