Me: “Alex…?”
Alex: “Yeah?”
Me: “This is the drawing you made in school, right? The one about the Three Kings? In the Christian Bible? Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar?”
Alex raises his eyebrows. I fail to see where you’re going with this.
Alex: “Yes…”
Me: “So why are they all black? As in dark-skinned? Aren’t Melchior and Caspar white or something?”
Alex: “…”
Me: “I mean, not that they were actually like that. I mean, Bethlehem? That’s in Palestine. Most biblical figures are portrayed as white-skinned in the West, but I suppose they must have, in reality, been quite a bit darker. At least olive-skinned, right?”
Alex: “Can I go play Wii now?”
Me: “Oh, I get it! Alex, you brilliant child – you colored them like that to show your appreciation for cultural diversity! And that appearance and physical form matter not at all! Am I right? Am I right?”
Alex: “Actually…I just didn’t have any beige crayons in my box.”
Me: “Hmph. Well, that sounds a good deal less impressive. But whatever, we’ll skip over it. How about we just hang the drawing over the mantle and you can shock mom’s prudish Catholic cocktail party friends with your heretic open-mindedness?”
Alex: “Sounds good to me.”
Lol. “Heretic open-mindedness”.
Oh, gosh. Don’t get me started. I go insane over that, I really do. I’ve made it a duty to point out every inaccuracy in culture when looking at different nativity scene set ups. “THEY ARE WHITE AS SWEDES! WTF?”
Sorry, but no. Jesus was most likely tan to olive skinned, folks. Sorry to burst your Aryan bubble. Gah. I do not get society at all. HOMG BROWN JESUS, RUN AWAY!
Kids say the darnedest things. That’s a keeper. 🙂