But the JW's have banned Christmas, Easter, birthdays, crosses and lifesaving blood transfusions, so call me suspicious but I don't think it's God who's instructing them..
I hope you have taken Pegg's advice.....
A Google search will inform you of the origins of Christmas, Easter and birthdays.....not one of them are mentioned in the Bible as being celebrated by Christians. People assume that they are because that is what they have been taught.
There is no "Christmas" celebration mentioned among the first Christians because Jesus did not celebrate birthdays and neither did the Jews as a nation. Only pagans celebrated birthdays and as its customs were tied up with spititism, (which was also forbidden to God's people Deut 18:9-12) the ancient Jews shunned such celebrations.
Christmas was introduced by the paganized Roman church as a way to keep the pagan "converts" happy. In order to convert to "Christianity" they got to keep their cherished festivals, under another name.
You will not find "Easter" mentioned in the Bible either. In adopting this pagan celebration, Christendom did not even remove the name of the pagan fertility goddess in whose honor it was held. The rabbits and eggs of her celebration are still very much in evidence to this day.
Grafting "Christian" labels over pagan festivals and beliefs did not "Christianize" them...it paganized Christianity, just as Jesus and his apostles foretold. (Acts 20:29, 30, 1 Tim 4:1-3).
The cross as a religious symbol pre-dates Christianity by millennia. It was always associated with disgusting worship conducted by those who did not worship Jehovah. You have seen the ankh cross in Egyptian artefacts....associated with sex and fertility. The instrument used to put Jesus to death was a "stauros", which never means two beams crossed at any angle. It is a single upright pole.
According to Greek scholar W. E. Vine, stauros′ denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroō, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross.
And as for the "life saving" aspects of blood transfusions, I think you need to Google "the dangers of blood transfusions" and "bloodless surgery".
Jehovah's Witnesses have proven that the myth of blood transfusions "saving lives" is just that....a myth. There are other alternative measures that do not involve breaking God's laws. Now that the medical profession acknowledges that blood is not such good medicine, whole hospitals dedicated to the non use of blood have been set up all around the world.
The real benefit of blood transfusion is mostly financial. It is a multi-billion dollar industry which those who make a nice living off it will fight to continue, no matter how dangerous it is proven to be to the health of recipients. The Biblical laws on blood was defined in absolute terms. (Lev 17:10) Anyone consuming any sort of blood was to be put to death. The injunction on blood was repeated as a "necessary thing" for Christians. (Acts 15:28, 29)
In a world ruled by the devil....nothing is as it 'appears'. (1John 5:19) There is so much deception that nothing that is promoted as beneficial actually is.....and the things that the Bible promotes is viewed as restrictive, outdated and old fashioned.
How much actual happiness comes from the "things" that the world says you must have? A fleeting moment of exhilaration on acquiring something desired is replaced by the need to get the next "must have" item.....chasing happiness that can never be sustained.
Don't fall for the propaganda! The devil has most of humanity in a state of despair.....those who "have" are not genuinely happy and those who "do not have" are equally miserable because they are convinced that "having" these things automatically make us happy.....its a lie!!!! "The best things in life aren't THINGS" !!!
The only thing that brings real happiness is to be pleasing to God as a disciple of his son, living a simple life, free from "the love of money" and it's never ending pursuit of fleeting happiness (1 Tim 6:10)....Christians who haven't fallen for the lie know that making God happy, makes them happy.
