Already I feared a few days ago that upon entering the church (for a Christmas concert) my daughters would ask me about the figure of Jesus on the cross, although that issue did not finally come. But before another different brete yes I was immersed yesterday. When you go to see a Christmas nativity scene with your children, the last thing you expect is to end up talking about the cruelest stories in the Bible.
But yes a little one sees a figurine of a soldier going through a naked baby with a swordYou will probably ask us what is happening there. In that situation, I met yesterday with my four-year-old daughter, who had already seen the nativity scene in earlier dates, but probably never with much detail.
In general, she knows the story of the birth of Jesus and the Magi, both because she has heard it in school (although she does not go to Religion) and because of Christmas carols, gifts or certain drawings she has seen. Evidently, The episode of Herod and the slaughter of the innocents is not to tell the children happily.
So she had not heard of this. We remember how "Herod's case" is cited in the Bible:
Herod then, when he was mocked by the magicians, became very angry, and sent to kill all the children under two years of age in Bethlehem and all its surroundings, according to the time he had inquired of the magicians. (Matthew 2:16)
This episode, of which there is no more historical evidence than we can give to the Bible, is undoubtedly one of the most remembered by his truculence and the horror that such an action would entail.
So, always letting my daughter see that we were facing a story, a "story", I told her how it was told that an evil king got word that a "new King" was going to be born, another king much more powerful than him , and then, to avoid it, he ordered the killing of newborn babies.
In the end, my explanation became that of a war of powers, although my daughter did not understand how a baby could be more powerful than an older king. And also why "the baby king" was not a prince and his parents were not the Kings. Nor why the parents of the babies did not defend their children.
By the way, that as the Magi also appear in the nativity scene my daughter must have ended up thinking that this was a "rare" or "polyarchy" rather rare, because in reality now that I think about it, she will not know what "East" is ...
After all this episode, I have realized that I will need to talk with my daughters later about many stories of the Bible, the beautiful ones and the bloody ones, so that they see them as what they think to me and to many people, literature that , maybe in part, it could happen.
I will not deny your reality, but I will raise my doubts, historical incongruities, unlikely episodes and highlight the symbolism and poetry that hides behind the sacred texts, from times and authors so different, and by the way sometimes opposed to each other. If we were to prove the reality of each passage of the Bible, we would get lost. Question of faith, then.
Luckily, among my slightly improvised explanations of the "Herod case", she went on to the next scene much more friendly and traditional, and we could continue enjoying the nativity scene without further complicated explanations ... for now. I'll tell you if you ask me again about the issue of the baby killer.
