Pastor Seth Hedman, Garwin Valley Community Church.

As a father, I have come to truly love the old fairy tales: Cinderella, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk… even the short, folksy tales like Three Little Pigs and Three Billy Goats Gruff. All of them are simple and memorable, yet profound. But why these stories? There was no great council or law passed creating a canon of fairy tales. A few compilers and creators like the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Anderson in the 1800s certainly played important roles. But more than the exclusive authority of a few, fairy tales get passed down from the collective authority of the many. Their structure and content are “sticky.” They are told and re-told from generation to generation simply because mothers and fathers remember them and like them.

So what is sticky about these stories? First of all, they are logically and creatively structured for the art and drama of story-telling. Have you tried to hold the attention of a four year old for more than a minute? Repetitions, rhymes, voices, and sounds all create patterns in the mind of both story-teller and listener. The trip-trap of the billy goats, the knock-knocking of the big bad wolf, the escalating risk and treasure of Jack… these moments are the heart of the interplay between teller and listener in a story that makes it mutually enjoyable and memorable.

Yet, these fairy tales go deeper. For all their magic, fairies, and talking animals, these are profoundly true. They describe the real world, as it is described in the Bible, yet filtered through the magic of myth. It is the same real world of good and evil, cruelty and compassion, romance and sacrifice, cursing and blessing, sacred objects and miracles, all surrounded by dark and light spiritual actors. Yet the fairy tale is not a textbook or a sermon, it is a story. Like all stories, they shape the soul of its listeners indirectly through the imagination.

So we do not need to teach a toddler about murderers and rapists, we can tell them stories about monsters and dragons. We don’t need to teach them “stranger danger,” we can tell them the story of the three little pigs. When the wolf knocks and demands to be let in, and a child cowers a bit in fear and suspense, this is good. The power of story is creating a natural, healthy, and reasonable suspicion towards the danger of what’s outside and unknown. This is the real world. This is the point and power of these stories and our ancestors understood this. Cinderella creates a longing for divine help in times of desperation. Snow White helps a young girl make sense of beauty, puberty, and romance. Jack helps a young boy make sense of risk, reward, and wisdom. They likely will not have even realized it. Yet these stories, over a childhood, help create one’s “imaginative landscape,” the world of assumptions, images, and instincts in the background of one’s soul.

So is a witch good or bad? A dragon? Should you trust a fox, or a man you’ve never met? How should a child respond to danger? How should a man respond when a woman is in trouble? How should a woman think of beauty? There are ethical, logical, and biblical answers to these questions but many of them will be answered intuitively by one’s imaginative landscape long before they encounter them directly. The stories in our fairy tale tradition, steeped in the biblical truth of Christian medieval Europe, are second only to the Bible in their capacity to shape a child’s imaginative landscape. We neglect, subvert, and deconstruct these stories at the peril of the next generation. So gather ’round the kids and grandkids… it’s story time.