Gallows Humor and A JW Childhood

I watched a clip of a comedian’s standup where she stated that growing up she didn’t know that she had dysfunctional parents until she invited a classmate for a sleepover. When her parents got drunk and began fighting, the classmate was horrified and asked her parents to pick her up.

My parents were not dysfunctional alcoholics, but they were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I was raised in a JW echo chamber. Subsequently, as an adult, I received a rude awakening whenever I shared anecdotes about my childhood with acquaintances who had not been raised as JWs.  

Former JWs, in an attempt to bond, did you ever share an anecdote about your childhood to elicit a chuckle only to find that your statement evoked a shocked or pity reaction from your audience? 

Case in point, my JW family found it amusing to quip about the time that my middle sister (then a toddler) accompanied my mom on a Bible study. When they returned to the car, my mom saw that my sister had swiped an ornament from the house. My mom, furious and embarrassed, spanked my sister while demanding, "Why would you do that?” Her toddler response? “It was pretty.”

Other Witnesses usually found the anecdote hilarious. Normal people - not so much.

Honestly, it took years for me to understand that the shocked non-JW reaction to my “witty” lived experience was their sorrow for a toddler who wasn’t allowed to marvel at the beauty of a bedecked Christmas tree and who received punishment and anger when she wanted to touch the shiny, pretty decoration. 

It was not unlike a conversation that I remember having with a coworker when I was an office admin:

Co-workers: What are you doing this weekend?”

Me: “My husband and I are taking a weekend anniversary trip. My daughter (who was then around 7 or 8) is so excited.”

Coworker: “Wait, you’re taking your daughter on your anniversary trip?”

Me: “Yeah, we let her celebrate with us since she doesn’t get to celebrate   

  birthdays.”

Crickets and a sympathetic stare. That uncomfortable silence after my social faux pas made me decide not to relate our family custom of allowing our daughter to choose an anniversary cake even though (of course) it couldn’t have candles for her to blow out.

Or, how we made sure that she also received a gift-wrapped “anniversary present,” since as a child, I don’t remember ever receiving pretty, wrapped gifts until my high school graduation. In my own way, I was attempting to rewrite a script so that my child wouldn’t feel as left out as I had felt. Other Witnesses thought that I was a bit indulgent with my only child.

My coworker, however, only heard that our child had never had a birthday party; she had never been serenaded by friends before blowing out candles on her cake, and she had never received a birthday present. My coworker looked as if she wanted to cry. 

Little did she know, there was plenty of pathos that I hadn't shared. 

Born-in JWs, did you have the child JW self-flagellation ritual whenever we had to remind teachers that we had to be the weirdo who requested a different assignment when our class made Valentine cards to share, colored pumpkins for Halloween, or colored a turkey for Thanksgiving? Or when we had to ask to leave the classroom during nearly every class party. In elementary school during holiday parties, I was usually sent to the principal’s office where the secretary stole pitying glances at me over her glasses. 

And eating a birthday cupcake that a mom would bring in for the class to celebrate her kid’s special day? No way. Our official stance on cakes and parties and joy was:

[Birthday] celebrations tend to give excessive importance to an individual, no doubt one reason why early Christians shunned them. So you will find that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not share in birthday festivities (the parties, singing, gift giving, and so forth) 

Side note, another second-gen JW once related that, not only would she not eat someone’s birthday cupcake in elementary school, she told her classmates that they would die at Armageddon if they took one. No one did.

Hilarious stuff, am I right?

Looking back, it seems unbearably sad to spend a childhood devoid of the special events that our peers enjoy annually throughout their childhoods. Even more sinister was how conditioned we were to viilianize the chocolate birthday cupcake, the Halloween candy, or the pretty Christmas bauble. 

That means that not only were we not allowed to share in the fun with classmates and neighbors, we were supposed to pity the worldly people who got the Cabbage Patch kid or Power Rangers action figures for Christmas. Our parents had never lied to us about Santa, weren’t we lucky oops, fortunate?

Because luck along with celebrating birthdays and holidays and making toasts was all attributed to some obscure pagan norm that we had to reject.

Remember the tired response that we were expected to repeat by rote? “As Jehovah's Witnesses, we have parties and exchange gifts all throughout the year, not just on holidays.”

But did we, though? Or was that an urban myth? Show of hands, how many of us received a random party in May or nicely wrapped presents in September?

In my strict and devout parents’ house, if my parents had learned that we had ever told a worldly person that we even wanted to taste a Cadbury Egg or one of those Christmas tree sugar cookies that normal folks baked each year, or heart-shaped candy on Valentine’s Day, why that was as egregious as having celebrated the pagan holiday itself. To admit these longings would constitute prima facie evidence of being spiritually weak, and by extension, it would reveal that my father was not presiding over his household in a fine manner. Heaven forbid!

Former JWs, what narratives have you altered or learned never to share about your religious upbringing?