Jermaine Jackson says his family will stay together for Thanksgiving.

Michael Jackson ran afoul of the JW elders with Thriller

Thanksgiving is the beginning of the Christmas season. It’s the biggest family holiday of the year. More Americans travel this holiday than any other time.

It’s the weekend of John Candy and Steve Martin’s hilarious road movie Trains Planes and Automobiles. They were trying to get home for the Thanksgiving weekend.

But for the family of Michael Jackson it is confusion. Some of them are practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses and some aren’t. Do they get together and celebrate?

“The Jackson family gathered Tuesday for an early Thanksgiving celebration; though Jackson matriarch, Katherine Jackson, does not celebrate holidays due to her Jehovah’s Witness religious beliefs, it has been a tradition of the Jackson children to all gather one day during the week of Thanksgiving to celebrate being a family.” CMR

Cute trick. Celebrate a day early.

Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate much. Not Thanksgiving, not Christmas, New Years, Easter, Valentines, Independance Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, even birthdays or Mother’s Day.

Makes it hard to have family gatherings like normal people. The Jackson’s are practical they celebrate a day early and pretend it’s OK.

My father used to give our Christmas gifts on the 24th to keep my JW mother happy. I took her out for dinner the day before Mother’s Day for years until she caught on. She turned 90 this week but I didn’t dare call her. I mentioned it last weekend, just casually in passing.

JW families are weird. Part of what made Michael Jackson weird. It wasn’t the only thing but it was one big part.

When he made the video Thriller, the Jehovah’s Witness authorities were pretty riled up. It has things about ghosts and ghouls which are forbidden to JWs even in a music video.

To keep the elders off his back, he put a disclaimer on later versions of the video “Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.”

The official and longer version does not have the JW disclaimer.

You can find strong traces of this tension with the Jehovah’s Witness faith throughout his life.  Like many cults the Jehovah’s Witnesses box people into another world view and social culture.

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