Ok, so you are saying that the child should miss out on celebrating a holiday in order to spend time with a dad who will not celebrate the holiday? That is silly. If we are talking about say 6 holidays a year, dad could be given six extra days a year without taking celebrating the holidays away from the children, and accomplish the same result.
I am really serious here single317dad...JWs do not celebrate holidays AT ALL...and they are very serious about it. Judges commonly order that Christians get Christian holidays and Jewish parents get Jewish holidays in similar situations...which is ultimately fair and just. There is no reason to give secular or religious holidays to JW parents since they do not celebrate ANY holidays. By all means give dad alternate time off from school to make up for it, but its absolutely ridiculous to give him any holidays that he is actually not going to celebrate with the children.
Again, if his new wife is not JW and he actually intends to celebrate those holidays then that is a different story. Heck, give him the bulk of Christmas break if you want to but not Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve or New Years Day. Give him every Spring break, but not Easter. Don't give him the children's birthdays because he will ignore that its their birthday, give him an extra weekend in the summer but not the 4th of July. Memorial Day and Labor Day might not be a big deal if mom's family doesn't do anything special on those days, but they might also be a big deal if they do.
For all we know dad could have already gotten some concessions for not taking holidays. Don't have a knee jerk reaction because you think that somehow dad is losing something he is not going to celebrate with the children anyway. By all means suggest that he be given something in exchange if he is not already receiving something in exchange, but lets not go overboard here.
I know some JWs, and I'm aware of what they believe. I also know Mormons and Scientologists and Adventists. My opinion(s) on those belief systems notwithstanding, I have a couple of reasons for my answer.
1) A child's quality time with her parents should outweigh any holiday celebrations. There's nothing inherently special about any day on the calendar; they're all the same as the one before and the one after. The child will conveniently be out of school on those days in dispute. OP also stated in her first post that Dad has decided to start celebrating holidays now, so all your positing about the child missing out on holidays is moot.
2) Dad has the right to expose the child to his religious beliefs, the same as those Christian and Jewish parents you mentioned. That Mom and her family are accustomed to the child being at every holiday and to do otherwise would just break their hearts is of no consequence. What
is of great consequence, however, is that Dad initially agreed to the current arrangement and may find it difficult to undo his mistake.
If they actually agreed, then I would agree with you. However, they do not. Now, if dad's new wife is not a JW and they truly want to CELEBRATE holidays they maybe mom should consider that. However if dad's new wife is JW then they don't want holidays in order to celebrate them. They want holidays in order to reduce the number of holidays that the child celebrates.
There's a very high probability that either Dad and Stepmom are both JW or they are both not JW. JWs do not approve of mixed-faith marriages and are very liberal with the excommunication stick.
Except Dad didn't *want those holidays/days with the child. In the original decree, he GAVE MOM the holidays. But, it's selfish of HER to want to maintain status quo, or not give him days he didn't want???
In response to CJane's comment, my statement that OP sounded "selfish" related to her saying "
I don't want to give that up" as if this is all about
her instead of
the child.
Seriously, read the OP again. It reads to me like a parent who is upset at how a new arrangement will affect
them, with no thought of the child at all.
