On the censoring of seriousness for children

Our local church runs a monthly service aimed at children, with crafts and without Holy Communion. The team that organises the Friends and Family services are lovely, work very hard to come up with activities and an appealing programme for younger worshippers, and it is popular with families many of whom I don’t see at regular services. My daughter (3) loves it.

It’s on the first Sunday of every month, so the first Sunday of Advent coincided with the Friends and Family service. My daughter enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree, making little Christmas crafts and other activities. But one thing puzzled and still puzzles me.

This is one of the songs we were invited to sing. ‘Hee haw, hee haw, doesn’t anybody care? There’s a baby in my dinner and it’s just not fair.’ It’s supposed to be a funny song, from the donkey’s point of view, about the Holy Family in the stable and Jesus in the crib. What I don’t understand is why this should be considered more suitable for children than (say) Away In A Manger.

The former depends, for any kind of impact, on a level of familiarity with the Christmas story that allows you to see it’s a funny retelling and to get the joke. That already makes it more suitable for adults. The latter paints the Christmas scene in simple language and follows it with a prayer that connects the picture with the greater story of the faith it celebrates. The tune is easy to learn and join in with. Why choose the first, with its ironic posture and ugly, difficult tune, over the latter with its plain language and unforced attitude of devotion?

I’ve wondered for some time what it is about our culture that makes us reluctant to allow children to be serious. Children are naturally reverent: if the adults around them treat something as sacred, even very young children will follow suit without much prompting. This should come as no surprise – the whole world is full of mystery and wonder to a 3-year-old. It is us that fails so often to see this, not the children.

So why do we feel uncomfortable allowing children to experience seriousness? Sacredness? Reverence? How and why have we convinced ourselves that children will become bored or fractious unless even profoundly serious central pillars of our culture, such as the Christmas story, are rendered funny and frivolous?

The only explanation I can come up with is that it reflects an embarrassment among adults, even those who are still observant Christians, about standing quietly in the presence of the sacred. What we teach our children, consciously or unconsciously, is the most unforgiving measure of what we ourselves hold important. But it seems we shift uncomfortably at the thought of a preschool child experiencing the full force of the Christmas story in all its solemnity. Instead we find ourselves couching it in awkward irony, wholly unnecessary for the children but a salve to our own withered sense of the divine.

If it has become generally uncomfortable for us to see reverence in a young child, during Advent, then the Christian faith really is in trouble.