Christmas and Scientology

[thetanbuster]

Grant to me that I was only in the cult for half a year, but maybe another ex or indie or someone can explain exactly why a group who's founder says there is no Christ has a silly party for Christmas. One Good Reason.

[Commander Birdsong]

gee

i dunno...

when i was on staff it was just another work day like any other and you could catch hell if you tried to use it to account for a dip in stats

[Bea Kiddo]

Grant to me that I was only in the cult for half a year, but maybe another ex or indie or someone can explain exactly why a group who's founder says there is no Christ has a silly party for Christmas. One Good Reason.

Do you mean the Bosun's Party? To get drunk once a year, of course!

I think they celebrate Christmas as a PR move - because the fact that Jesus never existed is super-confidential and not known until highest levels! So lower level Scientologists can still celebrate!

[lotus]

Grant to me that I was only in the cult for half a year, but maybe another ex or indie or someone can explain exactly why a group who's founder says there is no Christ has a silly party for Christmas. One Good Reason.

No no no

We don't know this till we pay for the Truth Revealed
or should I say we didn't kew this till truth revealed wich has been modified since

Actually spreading the secrets for free is unfair competition

[Moosejewels]

Grant to me that I was only in the cult for half a year, but maybe another ex or indie or someone can explain exactly why a group who's founder says there is no Christ has a silly party for Christmas. One Good Reason.

I can remember a Christmas eve at my org when we were having a "graduation". You know, the kind where all we trained seals clapped and hooted on cue. The moderator at the graduation (I won't use names) spent a few arrogant, haughty minutes dismissing Christmas as some silly celebration of a "guy who dropped his body, then came back". "Big deal".
Of course we all thought this was hilarious because after all, we Scientologists knew everything there was to know about dropping bodies / dying, etc.
I recount this story as an example of the arrogance and absolute disregard for the sensibilities of other people's beliefs.
We had no Christmas celebrations.

[Ho Tai]

Grant to me that I was only in the cult for half a year, but maybe another ex or indie or someone can explain exactly why a group who's founder says there is no Christ has a silly party for Christmas. One Good Reason.

It was something to do that was different from the week-in, week-out grind of get it done by 2PM Thursday. People would come up with skits - the guys would challenge the girls as to who has the best performance. We exchanged gifts. It was actually very nice. The sad and weird part was that it was a spin-off of somebody else's celebration. Like there wasn't enough substance in Scn to support its own unique celebration.

And personally, I grew up a Christian, but dropped Christianity in college long before I knew anything about Scn, but I have always celebrated Christmas because of the strong memories and emotions it brings up from my childhood. When my kids were young we celebrated Christmas, though we gave them no Christian upbringing. We made it a special time of year and they value it still.

[thetanbuster]

in Atlanta it was used heavily to buy things from the org, as you can imagine, and like some of you mentioned, it felt very hollow to me, much like thre previous poster said. A rip off of someone else's thing. When I was in scn, I thought I was truly done with Chrisitanity, and was sort of taken aback that Christmas was mentioned, at the time, I didn't want any more Christmas!

[Panda Termint]

Grant to me that I was only in the cult for half a year, but maybe another ex or indie or someone can explain exactly why a group who's founder says there is no Christ has a silly party for Christmas. One Good Reason.

... because, in scientology, there's so little else to celebrate. Even a supposedly implant-inspired, borrowed occasion is better than none.

Besides, it helps with the protective PR camouflage.

[Type4_PTS]

When I was on Boston staff back around 1984 the CLO/FOLO management had figured out that each season the stats crash in the East U.S. around Christmas.
Staff and public want to spend more time around their friends and family around that time and so took off some days for this purpose.

CLO came up with what was called the "Festive Season Program" which was designed to prevent the stats from crashing during this period. They "volunteered" me to help run the program and brought me up to N.Y. for that purpose for a week or two. No staff or public were to miss any time without making it up on other days. It had priority over any other program going on at that time and no matter how busy staff already were it was demanded that they do this program. Christmas was just looked at as counter-intention to the only game that could save the universe. Losing time either on course or being audited because you wished to celebrate Christmas with your family was not tolerated.

And this program was brutally enforced. I know because I was the one who did it. There was another woman who also did it with me, she had been an RTC Missionaire and was assigned to this program as well. I can't recall her name but if you're on this board - please send me a message!

Either the CO, LRH Comm, or Flag Rep in each org would be responsible to get this program done in each of their orgs. They would have to ensure that every active public that was on lines would be contacted and their plans for the holidays would be queried. If it involved taking 1 or more days off from their service they would have to figure out how to make up this time. In some cases it required people taking time off from their regular jobs so they could put in extra hours to make up for the lost days.

[Operating DB]

I remember feeling pissed off and disappointed that after a fun New Years eve celebration I had to go into the Org the next morning to audit fucking objectives on a pc for my Dianetics internship. I'm glad those days are way in the past and will never have to to do that again.