Matthew 14:6
Matthew 14:66On Herod’s birthday, however, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod
is one of the two "birthday narratives" the Reasoning From the Scriptures book uses to ground the Watchtower's birthday ban. Herod's birthday feast led to the beheading of John the Baptist; combined with Pharaoh's birthday feast in (which ended in the execution of his baker), the rs book argues that birthday celebrations are inherently associated with violence and divine disapproval. The two-narratives pattern is treated as Jehovah's "unfavourable report" on birthday observance.
Two pagan-tyrant narratives is not a pattern. Both Pharaoh and Herod are figures whose entire biographies are unfavourable reports — Pharaoh murdered his own baker on a whim, Herod was bullied by his stepdaughter into beheading the prophet who rebuked his marriage. The common factor is the tyranny and the rash oath, not the feast. Apply the same hermeneutic consistently and the rs argument collapses: the Bible records Jesus cursing the only fig tree named in detail, so therefore fig trees are evil; David wrote a letter to have Uriah killed, so therefore writing letters is evil; Zechariah was struck mute for asking a question, so therefore asking God questions is forbidden. The narrative-as-prescription move is the fallacy. Pair with (the angel Gabriel prophesying that "many will rejoice over [John's] birth"), ("cursed be the day I was born"), and ("Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth") — the latter two presuppose that the day of birth was normally blessed, which you cannot curse if it was never customarily blessed.