Birthdays: can Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate them now?

Dear brothers and curious readers,

today we want to look together at a single paragraph. It’s not ours: it’s from Awake! of July 8, 2004, “From Our Readers” section. The words are from official publications. We read them calmly and draw the consequences.

The paragraph

Here is what Awake! wrote in 2004:

“Christians do not observe holidays or customs that continue to be tied to false religious beliefs or to activities contrary to Bible principles. For example, the Bible certainly presents birthday celebrations in a bad light. (Genesis 40:20; Matthew 14:6-10) However, when it is clearly evident that today a custom no longer has religious connotation and does not entail violation of Bible principles, each Christian must personally decide whether or not to follow that custom.”

Let’s reread the second part calmly. “When it is clearly evident that today a custom no longer has religious connotation” — the decision belongs personally to the Christian.

This is not an opinion or a disguised concession: it is the principlethat the Organization itself published in its official magazines. And now let’s see what happens when this principle is applied to another custom.

The case of the toast

There was a time, in the congregations, when raising a glass to make a toast was off-limits. The teaching was clear: the gesture had pagan origins — ancient rites, libations offered to Greco-Roman gods. The connection with those origins was enough to avoid it.

Then, years later, The Watchtower returned to the topic. Not to condemn further, but to say the opposite: today, in the social context in which we live, raising a glass to wish someone well is no longer perceived as a religious gesture. It is a secular custom of well-wishing. Therefore — key phrase — it is a matter of personal conscience.

What had changed between the first teaching and the update? Are the historical origins of the toast different? No. The history remained identical. What changed was how the 2004 principle was applied: we looked at the current context, not the distant past. We assessed how people today live the gesture. We concluded that personal conscience can decide.

But the Bible only speaks of it negatively

We’ve heard this argument many times too: in the Bible only two birthday feasts appear — Pharaoh’s (Genesis 40:20-22 NWT) and Herod’s (Mark 6:21-28 NWT) — and in both, someone dies. Conclusion: Jehovah doesn’t like birthdays.

But something struck us. If we really apply this reasoning — “if the Bible only or almost always speaks of it negatively, then it’s wrong” — we arrive at conclusions none of us would accept.

Dogs.The Bible mentions dogs around 40 times, and almost always negatively: “dead dog” as an insult (1 Samuel 24:14; 2 Samuel 9:8 NWT), “the dog returns to its own vomit” (Proverbs 26:11; 2 Peter 2:22 NWT), “do not give what is holy to dogs” (Matthew 7:6 NWT), “watch out for the dogs” (Philippians 3:2 NWT), and even “outside are the dogs” in the very last chapter of the Bible (Revelation 22:15 NWT). Yet none of us thinks that having a dog at home is a sin.

Wedding feasts.The first wedding feast described in detail in the Bible is Samson’s, with the Philistines, and it ends with thirty men killed (Judges 14:10-19 NWT). Even Herod’s birthday is tied to an unlawful marriage with his sister-in-law. Yet Jesus chose a wedding feast for his first miracle (John 2:1-11 NWT), and the Kingdom of God is compared to a wedding (Matthew 22:2; Revelation 19:7 NWT).

Dance.This is the detail that surprised us most. Dance appears in the two most serious episodes of the Bible: the golden calf (Exodus 32:19 NWT) and — precisely — Herod’s birthday, where Salome dances (Mark 6:22 NWT). Yet David dances before the Ark (2 Samuel 6:14 NWT) and the Psalms invite us to praise God “with tambourine and dance” (Psalm 149:3; 150:4 NWT).

And birthdays?

Here we return to the point. The 2004 paragraph explicitly mentions birthdays. And it raises — even if perhaps not in the intentions of who wrote it — the key question:

Today, does a birthday party still have religious connotation?

Let’s think about it honestly. A cake. Candles. The song “Happy Birthday to You”. A gift. Family and friends gathered. What religious rite is performed? What deity is invoked? What superstition is practiced?

Candles are not altars. The cake is not a sacrifice. The song “Happy Birthday to You” was composed by two American teachers in 1893 as an educational song. There is not a single religious practice involved in the way Western Christians today celebrate a birthday. It is a secular and family celebration— an occasion to tell a person: “I’m glad you exist.”

The two biblical episodes cited (Pharaoh in Genesis 40 and Herod in Matthew 14) recount feasts in which murders were committed. The biblical problem was not the birthday: it was the murder. If Herod had John the Baptist beheaded during any banquet, or a wedding, or a military victory feast, the problem would have been identical. The Bible does not condemn parties: it records what happened during those parties.

A turning point in 1936

It wasn’t always like this. For many years the Bible Students — our brothers before the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” was adopted in 1931 — celebrated birthdays like everyone else.

The Organization itself acknowledges this in an article of The Watchtower (paragraph 67, wol.jw.org/en): in 1936“Christ refined the people”, leading them to abandon several practices then considered no longer appropriate, including birthdays and tobacco smoking.

We stopped to reflect on a simple fact. In the 1930s, in Italy, in America, throughout Christendom, birthdays were not perceived as a pagan practice. They were a normal family occasion. No society of the era classified these things as “religious.”

And yet the message was: up until yesterday it was fine, from today it’s no longer fine.

Almost seventy years later, in 2004, the Organization publishes that paragraph in the “From Our Readers” section of Awake!. And it says something very honest: when a custom in the country where we live no longer has religious connotation, it becomes a matter of personal conscience.

The same principle. The same logic. But meanwhile, for birthdays, the prohibition stays.

Caleb and the cake, and Peter denying Christ

There’s something that weighs on our heart, and we want to speak about it calmly.

For years, at meetings and assemblies, hundreds of thousands of children have been shown a video from the series Become Jehovah’s Friend: “Celebrating Birthdays”. The scene is simple: at school there’s a classmate’s birthday party. Caleb, after saying he can’t join, eats a small piece of cake.

And then, in tears, he feels that Jehovah is no longer his friend. His act is compared — in the narrative of the video itself — to Peter denying Christ three times (Matthew 26:69-75 NWT).

Let’s pause here for a moment. This is a video designed for children, shown in contexts where thousands of other children are present. The conclusion they learn is simple and brutal:

• a piece of cake = the betrayal of Christ
• eating a slice of cake = losing Jehovah’s friendship

Place this next to the 2004 paragraph we read together. On one side, the Organization writes that certain customs are “a matter of personal conscience” when they no longer have religious connotation. On the other side, children are told that tasting a piece of cake at a school party turns them into little Peters denying Christ.

Can these two things coexist? Really?

We don’t want to accuse anyone. We just want each of us to stop and ask — honestly, before Jehovah — whether the emotional weight we place on our children for a piece of cake is proportional to what the Scriptures truly ask of us. Peter denied the Son of God before a servant girl, while Christ was being put on trial for death (Mark 14:66-72 NWT). Caleb ate a piece of cake.

Perhaps, before teaching a child to feel like a betrayer of Christ, we ought to verify with the Bible in hand whether this is really what Jehovah is asking.

The principle that applies itself

Let’s put the pieces together.

The Organization itself, in 2004, wrote: “when it is clearly evident that today a custom no longer has religious connotation… each Christian must personally decide.”

The toast update confirmed: the criterion is not the ancient origin, it is the current meaning.

Today, a family birthday celebration:

• Has no religious connotation
• Does not entail violation of Bible principles
• Does not invoke deities, offer sacrifices, or perform rites

A fraternal reflection

Let us close as brothers, not as polemicists.

Perhaps you were born in a family where birthdays were never celebrated. Perhaps you watched your child’s birthday pass without a candle, and something within you wondered if that is really what Jehovah is asking of you. Perhaps you showed the Caleb video to your child and saw that weight on his face, and something inside you didn’t add up. Perhaps you have read that 2004 paragraph a thousand times, but no one ever drew the parallel with the toast case, with 1936, and with that video.

We want to tell you: it is not rebellion to apply the principle that the Organization itself published. It is not apostasy to read Awake! all the way through, take seriously the second half of the paragraph, and use the conscience that Jehovah gave us.

“Make sure of all things; hold fast to what is fine” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, NWT 2013). Making sure also includes reading one’s own organization’s magazines carefully, and applying their own principles consistently.

If you want to explore the pattern “judicial loss → new light”of which these updates are part, you’ll find it here: The “new light”: what it really means. And if you want a broader tool to reflect on these things calmly, there’s the Student Kit.

— A Member of the Lovers of Truth