28 August,2018 07:50 AM IST | | A Correspondent
Serena Williams with her daughter Alexis Olympia
American tennis super star Serena Williams will not celebrate her daughter, Alexis Olympia's first birthday next month because she is a Jehovah's Witness. Asked how she would be celebrating her daughter's birthday at a press conference at the US Open on Monday, Serena said: "Olympia doesn't celebrate birthdays. We're Jehovah's Witnesses, so we don't do that."
Jehovah's Witnesses, a breakaway sect of Christianity, do not celebrate religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, and do not celebrate birthdays either. They believe that these festivals have pagan origins.
Serena Williams is an American professional tennis player. The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranked her world No. 1 in singles on eight separate occasions between 2002 and 2017. She reached the No. 1 ranking for the first time on July 8, 2002. On her sixth occasion, she held the ranking for 186 consecutive weeks, tying the record set by Steffi Graf for the most consecutive weeks as No. 1 by a female tennis player. In total, she has been No. 1 for 319 weeks, which ranks third in the "Open Era" among female players behind Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova
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