This time of year is for kids

Thursday, November 29 2007- Mapleton PRESS

The holiday season offers many opportunities to learn from kids, or hopefully to have them learn from you.

Case in point, I was sitting across from my 8 year old niece at a church dinner when she asked me a culinary question.

“Have you ever had Crème Brulée?”

“Mmmm, Crème Brulée,” I said, practically licking my lips. “Mmm, I like Crème Brulée, your Aunt Bethany LOVES Crème Brulée, you know, I bet that your Mom would like it too. It is SO good...” a look of abject horror registered on her face. How could any kid not like sugar custard topped with caramelized brown sugar?
“
YOU like fish eggs?!” she asked incredulously.

Obviously she got her French confused with her Russian.

“I think you mean Caviar, Caviar is fish eggs,” I explained. “It’s really salty, it’s really not as bad as you think, but it’s not my favorite. What you should really try is escargot. We had that once at a French restaurant in California. I love garlic, but I wasn’t crazy about the escargot itself. But You might love it, it’s very fancy,” after all, she is our princess.

She must have known better than to take another bite of turkey and mashed potatoes before she asked, “What’s es-car-go?”

“Snails,” I replied as matter-of-factly as I could. This exchange led to her father, my brother-in-law and I to begin discussing the calamari (squid) experiences we each had while living on the coast. I believe it was about that point when my daughter and niece both excused themselves from the table. They looked like they were heading for the bathroom, but who knows.

Then there was the concert the missionaries put on at our church one night. I guess it was pretty motivational for a lot of people. I know that they’re absolutely sincere and committed to the Lord, but I guess my musical tastes tend to be a little more worldly. But before our five year old became so disruptive that we had to leave, the concert provided a classic theological moment with our eight year old.

The husband of the duo stood up and walked away from his keyboard for a few moments of ministerial soliloquy before beginning a solo. Our daughter, Grace seemed absolutely mesmerized, no small feat with her younger sisters behaving as they were. It must have been because the man’s solo featured a piano accompaniment, but he was standing with his hands caressing a microphone, nowhere near his keyboard.

Halfway through the song, Grace leaned over to me and whispered, “Is God or Jesus playing the piano?”

See somewhere between enraptured Pentecostals and irreverent Agnostics lay we sensibly stoic Lutherans, so I pointed out the iPod held in the hand of the young man operating the mixing board in the middle of the pews. “Oh!” Grace whispered, nodding her head in recognition. She’s pretty tech-savvy so she knew what going on.

Fortunately, she still believes in God and Jesus although she announced on our drive to the family Thanksgiving that she “knows that Santa Claus is a fake.” She’d really into history and science so if we’d been alone, I might have tried talking about the real Saint Nicholas and generosity and faith all that grown-uppy stuff, but she dropped this bomb in front of her two and five year old sisters who were aghast.

Like any good parents we responded with an interrogation, “Who told you THAT?”
“A boy in my class,” for his protection, I will withhold his name at this time thereby preserving his anonymity.

“Well, you know what?” I went on, “I bet he’s just mad at Santa because he was naughty last year and got some coal in is stocking or something. Kids always say there’s no Santa, when really, they’re mad at Santa because they were naughty,” I reasoned.

After all, it has been my experience that there aren’t really any atheists. Probe someone who’s an atheist and you’ll usually find at most an agnostic who wants to be an atheist because they’re so angry at God. You can’t disbelieve someone and hate them at the same time. She seemed to buy it. Hopefully, in another year or two we can have “the talk” in private.

Ellen, our five year old is very concerned about Santa. Evidently, she’s worried that he’s getting very old and is much too over weight.

“Daddy?” she asked me one night after dance practice.

“Yes sweety?”

“I hope Santa Claus doesn’t die. What will happen to all of the children if he dies?”

“Um, er, uh…well, uh Santa is really good friends with Jesus, I uh” I was inches from going into History and Religion teacher mode and telling her about how Saint Nicholas punched out a Gnostic heretic at the Council of Nicea and how the legend started and how it has been adapted to different cultures all over the world, but she didn’t let me get a word in edgewise-

“Yeah, so God and Jesus won’t let Santa die because he wants all of the little children to have new toys for Christmas, like I want an MP3 player and a new Karaoke machine and a…” So obviously I have some lessons to go on selfishness, materialism, and the tragic discrepancies between the United States and most of the underdeveloped world. I let it go.

This was the same night that she told me that Elvis loved Christmas because he made all these Christmas movies that she’s seen in school and that “it’s too bad Elvis is dead because that means that she can’t marry him and that that’s why Aunt Lori had to Marry Uncle Mark, because Aunt Lori loves Elvis SO much”