Fairy tales do exist
When I was young, I was obsessed with fantasy adventures. I poured over The Chronicles of Narnia. I was taken by the original Star Wars trilogy when it would play on TV. I loved A Wrinkle in Time. When I finally read Lord of the Rings in high school, I wondered where this story had been all my life. I was drawn to any epic tale of people saving the world, usually in a fantastical world. I loved the idea of people, usually those who seemed ordinary, were thrust into an epic quest or battle to save everything, to stop some evil taking over. And at the end of the story, they would. Fairy tales. I loved them. I wanted to be in one. Not in the āprincess waiting to be rescued kind of way,ā but I wanted to do something important. I wanted the thrill of danger and the happy ending that me and my companions would overcome the darkness and save the world ā¦ or something like that.
āāFairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed,ā G.K. Chesterton is credited with writing. Somewhere in the time of growing up, you start to forget that. The stories get more gray. Bad guys donāt always wear black cloaks. Good guys arenāt always wearing white armor. And sometimes they do. But usually everyone is a little bit of both.
As you grow up, you look back at those stories and start to understand what was really at stake. As you fall in love, you realize what Belle losing the Beast really means. And then I became a mother and suddenly I felt everything more. Disney movies that didnāt phase me as a child make me cry without even trying now because I know whatās at stake for our heroes in a way I didnāt before.
But itās not just falling in love and parenthood. You grow up and learn more about the evils that exist in our own world. Who needs a dragon, a ring of power or a Sith Lord when you have homelessness, poverty, school shootings, war, an opioid epidemic, cancer, racial injustice and so much more hate, grief and devastation? Itās hard in the face of so much darkness to remember that dragons can be killed.
This is why I love Christmas. The Christmas story is a fairy tale. Itās not a fairy tale in the sense thatās itās untrue, but itās a story of God coming to rescue us, through a miracle, from all this pain weāve wrought upon ourselves and the world. Christmas gives me permission to stop and remember even in the face of darkness there is still hope, that miracles can still happen. That we, as humanity will some day be rescued from all this pain.
The Christmas story tell us that in all his great power, God decided to save us not through all his awesome force and might but by becoming the most vulnerable among us, a little baby. He came to us through the blood, sweat and tears of a young woman and all the pain and hormones of birth and newborn life, fully dependent on a woman living in an occupied land. And in that vulnerable state, he fled a death sentence and became a refugee. The littlest light in the darkest world, humble and vulnerable. But he endured, and one day, we look to the day when he will return for us and set all wrong things right. Death itself and hunger, grief, poverty. Violence will be rectified; families made whole. Victims and perpetrators alike will be saved.
And while we wait, Advent gives us space for the darkness. Not to push it aside and ignore it, eyes fixed so desperately on hope for fear it will flee if we acknowledge the loss and pain in our lives. Advent lets us breathe into the pain and let Jesus into that place too. The empty seats at our tables and in our hearts. The systemic injustices on the news. The dreams unfulfilled this year.
No matter how dark, Christmas invites us to stop and believe that maybe itās true that fairy tales still exist. As John opens in his Gospel, āThe light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.ā