An agnostic reconsiders Jesus

It's taken me almost 83 years to understand that old chestnut about the New York editor who, contrary to a local Scrooge's literalism, had to assure the young Virginia that, yes, there was an old bloke named Santa Claus. Things have suddenly become complicated because this old ex-Catholic agnostic lives in a German household where my three-year-old Danny is a baptized Lutheran and his mother Hilly belongs to her church's choir whose members gave Danny a five-volume set of Bible stories when he was born (in German, and I am bilingual at a kindergarten level).

Mother sits by, occasionally correcting my shaky pronunciation or translating an obscure verb. I stumbled along with the first episodes— on the flood, and David and Goliath (Danny loves every time Goliath gets stoned!) But with Book III we reached the birth of Jesus. Danny's Evangelical kindergarten, by the way, entertained their elders two days ago on the little stage of the local Hilton hotel. There were pseudo-scandalized adult titters as our young Mary and Joseph tried to comprehend the Angel Gabriel's fertilization news.

Now, the Bible is not a Catholic forte. I take it Luther took greatest umbrage at how the RC's had replaced the Bible with Mariolatry and other fakelore. (I can still spout my altar boy's Mass Latin, but I'd flunk the simplest SAT test on the Holy Book.) So I try to mask my skepticism from Danny as I repeat (and repeat, ad infinitum) those simple tales of the Augustan census, and the inns without rooms, and the shepherds and the Three Wise Men and their star, even as I identify with compassion for the poor embodied in these tales.

Long decades of reading philosophy intervene! I want Danny to learn compassion! But the old stories creak. How to tell those stories with conviction?

Umberto Eco weighs in

Thus was I thrilled serendipitously to read in the Christmas eve edition of the International Herald Tribune (Dec. 24, page 6) no less a spirit than Umberto Eco op-edifying on an analogous subject: the spectacle of three teenage kids of non-believing parents in a secular culture trying unsuccessfully to comprehend great art in their ignorance. This challenge arose when a 15-year girl with a book of art reproductions and two 15-year-old boys returned from the Louvre, elated but uncomprehending. Eco groused that most Italian kids knew about the death of Hector but not of St. Sebastian.

"It's impossible," he continued, "to understand roughly three-quarters of Western art if you don't know the events of the Old and New Testaments and the stories of the saints." Who's that girl with her eyes on a plate? Is she something out of Night of the Living Dead? Come on! Eco rails that "they cram students' heads with the Stations of the Cross while keeping them in the dark about "'the woman clothed with the sun' who appears in the book of Revelations."

Twittering the Three Wise Men

Eco concludes his sweet and highly credible harangue with the speculation that "the plight of those 15-year-olds who didn't recognize the Three Wise Men suggests to me that our vast information network conveys fewer and fewer facts that are truly helpful and more and more that are totally useless." Twitter away, folks!

Reminds me of Thoreau's reaction to New Englanders' enthusiasm about the newly laid Atlantic cable: "And what will be the first thing that comes into the broad flapping American ear? That the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough?"

Heh, Henry, life here ain't no rentless Walden. My German wife insists I translate my new Bible stories into English as we stumble along, so Danny at least can become bilingual. Belated Merry Xmas, and to all a decent accent.♦


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